The Front Page

A vigorous, manic drama, this Lewis Milestone classic about newspapers and newsmen wonderfully preserves a host of Depression-era attitudes and a glorious headline era.

A very entertaining picture for anyone anywhere. [25 Mar 1931, p.17]

This first film version, a milestone work in every sense, helped, through its fast, wise-cracking dialogue and rapid editing, to change the sight and sound of the new talkies. Adolph Menjou as the suave, double-crossing editor Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien as his star reporter head a great cast. [17 Dec 2006, p.8]

Lewis Milestone preserves more of the original play than Hawks in His Girl Friday, but it's a much thinner movie: more mechanical, less chilling or ripe in its cynicism, the pace less nimble and charged. Still, the dialogue is gritty, magical, top-flight. Modern screenwriters, see this and weep. [25 Jul 1999, p.43C]

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's perennial stage comedy about yellow journalism in Chicago hasn't much to offer in the way of action, but in this 1931 adaptation director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) manages to inject a fair amount of visual energy to complement the firecracker dialogue.

Milestone’s direction is only sporadically inspired.

Milestone's direction, veering between stagey two-shots and extravagant but purposeless camera movements, doesn't help either.