This movie was made by Billy Wilder, who, while making his share of classics in his heyday (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch and the climactic dynamic duo of Some Like in Hot in 1959 and The Apartment(Best Picture Oscar) in 1960. Then he made his biggest hit -- about a Paris hooked(Irma La Douce) in 1963.
The thing was : Billy Wilder off screen was a pretty profane, sexed up guy whose later movies (The Apartment, Irma La Douce and a banned movie about sex called Kiss Me Stupid) got the monicker: "sleazy." But in a good way.
The thing is this; they WERE sleazy ; Wilder used double entendres and sexual visual puns and "open ended sentences" (why you son of a ---!) and STILL managered to create oversexed "dirty movies" with the elegance of an old school artiste and the dialogue skill that mixed one-liners with profundity.
Came The Front Page in 1974, Wilder's characters could FINALLY cuss all they wanted (to a PG maxium as desired from the studio), and the sex talk could be frank.
And somehow, this freedom undid Billy Wilder in The Front Page. The elegance was gone, now these people were cussing and talking directly about sex(though not having it; I mean, Carol Burnett as a hooker?) But rather than seem hip, Billy Wilder felt a bit more like a dirty old man, filtering his dialogue through a borshct belt approach.
Wilder's great strength had been that he wrote his own movies -- but with a partner; first Charles Brackett and later IAL Diamond -- but still, the scripts were HIS. As he began his decline in the 60s and 70s, the fact that Billy Wilder would not and could not give over his scripts to younger, hipper guys started to make him sound old fashioned. Still, he fought back:
"They tell me I am not with these times. I ask you, who would WANT to be of these times?" The time honored rage of old guys getting old.
CONT
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roger1 (2394)
a year ago
Tarantino cited Wilder and Hitchcock and Ford and Hawks as directors who should have quit earlier; he felt their "last four films" were old man films of decline.
Not so , Hitchcock, his penultimate film Frenzy was a big hit and a Top Ten critical favorite in 1972. But Hitchcock hired the noted Broadway playwright Anthony Shaffer to write it(with an uncredited Hitchcock as co-writer.)
Modernly, old age hasn't stopped Scorsese, Spielberg, Eastwood or Ridley Scott from scoring box office and accolades. It seems that the switch from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood caught guys like Wilder off guard. He NEVER wanted to quit, but after The Front Page and two more, they made him. "They keep saying how great I am, but they never give me work," groused Wilder.
The cussing and sexuality of The Front Page survives in general, but not the approach to gays -- Wilder saw them as the source of Old Hollywood derision and broad playing. THAT's what would play today -- the old gay seducing the younger man to become his "pal and mentor."
All that said, I rather see the outline of Billy Wilder's great films of the late fifties and early 60's in The Front Page. Its in Panavision and though in color(as The Apartment and Some Like It Hot were not), the color schmeme is grim, green and gray. And there is one supporting actor -- Cliff Osmond -- who was in Wilder's "start of decline films" Kiss Me Stupid and The Fortune Cookie and so HE seems nostalgic of an earlier Wilder time. Plus the dialogue. Plus Jack Lemmon(especially, he was in The Apartment) and also Walter Matthau(he won an Oscar for The Fortune Cookie.) Lemmon was about finished as a star in 1974 -- though he would continue on as a great actor -- but Matthau was box office all through the 70's.
And.."The Front Page" even gets a "final line zinger" which, while not at the heights of "Nobody's perfect"(Some Like It Hot) or "Shut up and deal"(The Apartment)...serves as a warm reference to Wilder's end zingers past.
Matthau gets it: "Sonafabitch stole my watch."
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Roguemail (1565)
a year ago
There is an F bomb. Right at the end of the movie, uttered by Woody Allen.
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roger1 (2394)
a year ago
I was confused for a moment -- Woody Allen isn't in The Front Page (though it would have been fun to see him in a movie with Walter Matthau.)
But Woody Allen IS in "The Front" released two years later in 1976, and that is where he utters the F bomb. I think that movie kept its PG rating...
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