Curse of the Golden Flower (2007)

When Howard Hawks adapted The Front Page into His Girl Friday in 1940, he retained most of the original film’s plot and even some of its dialogue. Both films center on a newsroom covering a politicized murder case. However, Hawks made two key changes: softening the film’s more overt political messages and changing a major character from male to female.

Most likely due to the stricter enforcement of the Hays Code, His Girl Friday tiptoes around the Red Scare whereas The Front Page openly satirizes it. In The Front Page, directed by Lewis Milestone in the pre-Code Hollywood of 1931, the mayor of Chicago blatantly exploits a soon-to-be-hanged suspect for votes by labeling him as a Communist. Conversely, the mayor in His Girl Friday berates one of his cronies for attempting to pull a similar move on his behalf. The Front Page exposes the Red Scare as a political tool used to manipulate the public rather than a genuine threat, which passed censors in 1931 but would almost certainly not have made it to the big screen a decade later.