His Girl Friday

Christie Pits Film Festival 2019 - dynamic duos
Sunday, July 7th

His Girl Friday

Short film — Dinette

A shining example of screwball comedy, Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday still crackles with energy almost 80 years after its release. When hard-boiled newspaper editor Walter (Cary Grant) learns that his ex-wife and ex-star reporter Hildy (Rosalind Russell) is about to marry a bland insurance salesman, he reignites her journalist’s passion for uncovering the truth by enlisting her in the quest to save a man about to face the hangman for an accidental crime. The chemistry between Grant and Russell is fierce - while Walter is technically her boss, Hildy consistently proves they are evenly matched at every level while bucking off traditional notions of women’s roles and worth in the workplace.

Campy noir two-hander Dinette is a creation of Toronto’s all-woman sketch comedy troupe the Templeton Philharmonic. This short film transports us to a 1948 diner for a meeting between Marlene, who has a secret, and Georgia (writer and co-director Gwynne Phillips) who knows the truth and is none too pleased about it. Deftly deploying pitch-perfect 1940s fast-talking dialogue, the duo tease out the dissonance between the decorum expected of ladies in polite society and the dark deeds they’re really capable of.