His Girl Friday (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #38 extract: His Girl Friday (1940)

Tremendous. Like very few other films, of its time or of any time, His Girl Friday is a film entirely run by dialogue. In a way, you can see this film to represent Hollywood perfecting the play adaptation, and so be preemptive of great movies such as 12 Angry Men, A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. However, there is a distinct purity to this film in that the dialogue is a form of spectacle unlike that seen in any of the mentioned films; it dazzles, tickles, moves the plot, berates your ears and warms your heart. 

Not too cinematic, but a must see and a great piece of cinema, His Girl Friday is certainly a movie that will continue to ring through the ages.