Film Fatale: The Hawksian Woman
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When I first saw His Girl Friday (1940) I was taken aback. I’d never really watched anything from the 1940s, never mind going in the deep end with a black and white screwball comedy. But I was instantly obsessed. The dialogue is witty and races along at breakneck speed. On average the normal rate of dialogue in most films is 90 words a minute - His Girl Friday clocks in at around 240 words a minute. Subtitles are essential.
The director Howard Hawks was inspired to make the film after hosting a dinner party and starting a discussion about dialogue. He pulled out a copy of the play The Front Page to demonstrate the snappy exchanges between characters. A female guest took the role of a male character and Hawks realised the dialogue sounded much better with a woman reading.
In His Girl Friday the characters stumble over each other's lines and talk over one another, just like natural dialogue (and this was the first time this had been done in a film!) There’s political jokes, meta references, satire and the fourth wall is broken constantly - the whole film is absolutely bursting with energy. This wasn’t the stuffy black and white film I was led to believe all black and white films were. His Girl Friday opened up my whole world to the joys of Old Hollywood and screwball comedies, the so called ‘sex comedies without sex’, that were developed to skirt around the strict rules of the Hays Code that prohibited profanity, suggestive nudity and any form of violence.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The main character in His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson, is a Hawksian woman through and through. ‘Hawksian Woman’ is a term coined by feminist critic Naomi Wise in the 70s after realising many of Howard Hawks films featured a certain archetype of woman: Hawksian women are femme fatale adjacent but they’re assertive and sexually agressive. Where the femme fatale woman usually depends on a man, or uses men for her own benefit, the Hawksian woman is masculine, tough talking and independent. They work alongside the men, smoking cigs in the breakroom and drinking whisky with them.
“And what’s more attractive than a woman who has the confidence to tell a man to shut the fuck up? Nothing!”
The majority of Hawksian Woman films were made 1939-1946, reflecting the massive cultural shift in job roles that came in WW2. The men had to go and fight in the war and the women had to step up and head on out to work and support the family. The archetype fizzled out post WW2 as the men returned home and gender roles became much more rigid again. The media began focusing hard on the stories of housewives under the guise of protecting the sanctity of marriage and the nuclear family. There was no need for the women to be cracking jokes with the men anymore and getting their hands dirty! Just get the washing done and have dinner on the table by 6pm ladies, alright?
Davide Mana notes that “While the femme fatale uses her traditional seductive weapons to dominate her male counterpart, the Hawksian woman sort of faces him on his own turf, and beats him at his own game. She is practical instead of languid, spunky instead of cruel, and she’s more often than not a professional success in her own field. She’s competent and world-wise, intelligent and independent”.
Humphrey Bogart’s character in To Have and Have Not (1944), another Howard Hawks film that features Lauren Bacall as the Hawksian Woman, notes “a man alone ain’t got no chance”. The men in these films need the Hawksian Woman to get through life. They prop them up and help them navigate the tricky world Hawks’ characters exist in.
In His Girl Friday Hildy returns to her ex-husband Walter Burns' workplace, played by the extremely charming Cary Grant, to let him know she’s getting remarried. The chemistry between them is electric. They both can’t resist the drama of researching and writing about a newly developing murder case and end up running about town trying to piece together a story for the newspaper she used to work at with him. It doesn’t feel like a gendered film. She is taken seriously and she is on the same level as the men if not smarter. Hildy is always one step ahead of her sneaky ex with her quick thinking and sharp wit.
Howard Hawks' real life wife, Slim Keith, was thought to be the inspiration for these tough talking female characters. She embodied everything they did, she could charm a whole room, she discovered Lauren Bacall and made Hawks put her in his films and she dressed elegantly but masculine, in trilby hats, blazers and trousers, a pioneer for the 30s and 40s. She ran the show - a 1940s girlboss.
Although His Girl Friday has a traditional ‘happily ever after’ Hollywood ending which leaves me feeling a bit flat, and while it is not a perfect groundbreaking feminist film, it truly was lightyears ahead in terms of showing women as funny, quick witted and on the same level as men. Howard Hawks said it best when he said “I think that girls who insult people are very attractive.” And what’s more attractive than a woman who has the confidence to tell a man to shut the fuck up? Nothing!
Words: Eden Young
