Product: The Front Page [VHS] (1974)
Rating: 5.0
Utterly hilarious, worth watching over and over again
In terms of depicting life in a newspaper office and the part-sleazy, part-unscrupulous and (maybe) part-honorable behavior of journalists, this film is as good as you will ever get. Tetchy, growling, circulation-obsessed Walter Matthau is exactly what most newspaper editors think they should be like, while Jack Lemmon, keen to get married but ultimately more interested in a good scoop, represents everything that non-journalist women have never been able to understand about journalist men. There are moments when the movie descends into farce - as in the scenes involving the Viennese psychiatrist - and it is true that Carol Burnett's hooker is the one character part that doesn't quite work. But the script is sizzling, and the one-liners rarely falter. One of Billy Wilder's best.