Howard Hawks

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sevenarts
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Re: Howard Hawks

#26 Post by sevenarts » Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:58 pm

The Early Howard Hawks Blog-a-Thon has now started. It will run from today, January 12, through January 23, during which time my blog will be devoted exclusively to the pre-Bringing Up Baby films of Howard Hawks, and I'll also be soliciting posts from other bloggers and critics. So please join in if you have something to say about these films, or simply read along and comment wherever you'd like. I'm looking forward to lots of great writing on these films.

wpqx
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Re: Howard Hawks

#27 Post by wpqx » Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:07 am

Tiger Shark was considered a precursor to Jaws but seriously the film is less than perfect. Edward G. Robinson does a good enough job with the part. I recorded it off of TCM (as I did with The Crowd Roars) so if you keep up with their programming there's a chance it'll show again, but really a work only for completionists.

As far as pre-Baby Hawks I watched A Girl in Every Port last week and well this is a film you can't take too seriously otherwise your inner-feminist might run amuck. Still anything with Louise Brooks is worth watching.

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domino harvey
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Re: Howard Hawks

#28 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 19, 2009 3:57 pm

I finally caught one of TCM bimonthly screenings of the Crowd Roars this morning and I'm sad to say I got to side with those who were disappointed. It really only seemed to come alive in the very last scene
SpoilerShow
when Cagney and his brother egg on the ambulance drivers to race to the hospital
Coming so close to the superior (and admittedly more serious) the Criminal Code and Scarface, this one feels justly overlooked. But speaking of overlooked, as highly as I regard Ball of Fire, I was shocked at how good Hawks' own musical remake, A Song is Born, was when I watched the new DVD release a few weeks ago--it may even be better than the Cooper/Stanwyck film, and this is coming from someone who ranks the original among Hawks' best!

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Matt
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Re: Howard Hawks

#29 Post by Matt » Tue May 19, 2009 4:12 pm

domino harvey wrote:it may even be better than the Cooper/Stanwyck film, and this is coming from someone who ranks the original among Hawks' best!
This time you've gone too far. Scott Eyman provides the sane person's assessment of the film.

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domino harvey
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Re: Howard Hawks

#30 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 19, 2009 4:19 pm

My favorite Hawks film is Air Force, so I'm used to possessing the minority opinion by now!

Back to the Crowd Roars, I didn't even realize it when I DVR-ed it, but Indianapolis Speedway is a 1939 remake and is shockingly superior to the original in just every way. I think it goes a long way towards damning Hawks' film when Lloyd Bacon of all directors is running laps around him!

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Gregory
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Re: Howard Hawks

#31 Post by Gregory » Tue May 19, 2009 7:52 pm

An odd thing I've noticed about Hawks is that for every single film he made there's at least one person knowledgeable about Hawks's oeuvre who will value that film extremely highly. It seems to go beyond the much more common practice of half-heartedly sticking up for a reviled film by a great director by saying just that it's not all that terrible or that it had some good moments. An example of this is Glenn Erickson praising Land of the Pharaohs to the skies -- and not really as great camp but as great filmmaking. The only real exception to this that comes to mind is Rio Lobo. Anyone want to step forward and call that one a masterpiece?

Anyway, domino, what did you like so much about A Song is Born? It's probably as good a time as any to reassess it, what with the new DVD.

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knives
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Re: Howard Hawks

#32 Post by knives » Tue May 19, 2009 7:58 pm

Rio Lobo can't be any worse then Rio Bravo.

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domino harvey
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Re: Howard Hawks

#33 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 19, 2009 8:52 pm

Gregory wrote:An odd thing I've noticed about Hawks is that for every single film he made there's at least one person knowledgeable about Hawks's oeuvre who will value that film extremely highly. It seems to go beyond the much more common practice of half-heartedly sticking up for a reviled film by a great director by saying just that it's not all that terrible or that it had some good moments. An example of this is Glenn Erickson praising Land of the Pharaohs to the skies -- and not really as great camp but as great filmmaking.
I had a professor who vigorously defended Monkey Business (to my eyes the worst Hawks film), but hated Bringing Up Baby! I think like Hitchcock or Preminger, Hawks' oeuvre gives different viewers different pleasures. I doubt any two people who've seen the majority of Hawks' work could produce the same Top 5. Even Hawks' weaker films prove to be at very least entertaining (Of the thirty Hawks films I've seen, only the Thing From Another Planet dragged for me), and that's honestly the only defense I could be able to muster for Land of the Pharaohs: As ridiculous as it all is, it's undeniably entertaining as hell!
Gregory wrote:Anyway, domino, what did you like so much about A Song is Born? It's probably as good a time as any to reassess it, what with the new DVD.
I went in very skeptical, so firstly the film had that most unpredictable of pluses in its column-- it exceeded low expectations. But as the film progressed and I realized it wasn't going to be awful, I found myself uncontrollably won over by the film. The switch from grammar to music not only works, it makes more sense than in the original, and the payoffs are more satisfying. I think the secret to enjoying the remake is realizing that unlike the original, it isn't very interested in laughs, so the pacing is different. The two leads of Kaye and Mayo, who are of limited range, function better in the roles than Cooper and Stanwyck (the exception here is Dan Duryea's weasly muscle-man, who is missed). The actors are very dynamic in the original, but in the remake the roles are more properly flat and subdued. Now, there's something to be said about star performances of course. Ball of Fire is, as I said, a great film. But the changes made by Hawks in the remake prove to be more satisfying choices on the whole.

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domino harvey
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Re: Howard Hawks

#34 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:33 pm

Someone has uploaded a good copy of A Girl in Every Port on YouTube and I partook in it a couple days ago. Man, even this early in the game, Hawks has all the staples down, though I thought it was interesting that here the Hawksian skilled professionalism was less related to their adeptness at being sailors and more their effective Lotharioism! It was nice to see McLaglen outside of a Ford film, and he's very funny, though anyone else think he resembles a young Gary Cooper here?

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Re: Howard Hawks

#35 Post by myrnaloyisdope » Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:20 am

I saw it a couple of years ago and liked it very much. Of the three Hawks silents (Fazil and Fig Leaves being the others) I've seen, it certainly feels the most like a Hawks film. It's very much in line with films like Hatari! in terms of tone and theme. You have the rough and tumble friendship of the male leads, with a female intruder causing the tension and the backdrop of some dangerous and exciting profession for additional excitement. It's classic Hawks and like you said, Domino, it's already working quite well.

I do remember being a bit disappointed at the absence of Myrna Loy (despite it being listed in her filmography) in the film. Perhaps there are scenes missing from the copy(s) floating around?

As for his other silents, Fig Leaves is a pretty silly marital comedy in the mode of the Gloria Swanson-Cecil B. DeMille collaborations. The opening flashback to the garden of eden is fun enough, replete with some Die Nibelungen-esque dinosaurs, and some condescending humor about ladyfolk, but once if shifts to the modern day it never really goes anywhere. Fazil is a serious melodrama the problems of cross-cultural romance, this time a young French woman (Gretta Nissen) marries an Arab (Charles Farrell) and conflict ensues when it turns out she can't handle living in the desert. There is lots of soft-focus photography that is quite lovely, but a bit overdone and there is some really striking montage work, but like Fig Leaves there isn't really anything distinctly Hawksian about the tone of the film. It's very much the kind of film that was in vogue in the 1920's in the wake of Valentino's The Sheik, with the exotic male lover taking the white woman and showing her what love really is. What does make the film of interest is the tension that exists between the pedestrian plot and the self-consciously artful way in which the film was made. You get the sent that the film is trying to aspire to some artistic brilliance, an aspiration that seemed to in the air on the post-Sunrise Fox lot. This is particularly fascinating in light of Hawks' later refusal to refer to himself as an artist and his more direct approach to film-making.


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hearthesilence
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Re: Howard Hawks

#37 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:21 am

Just about every major film he did - I only wish they were screening The Big Sky, but that's nitpicking:

Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man

January 13, 2012 - April 17, 2012

This series celebrates the work of one of the most-loved directors of classical Hollywood cinema. A consummate professional, Howard Hawks (1896–1977) directed more than forty films, completing his first features at the end of the silent era. Often working as both director and independent producer, Hawks maintained his autonomy within the studio system, allowing him control over his own destiny as an artist. Influenced by John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, and Josef von Sternberg, Hawks directed films in every Hollywood genre: screwball comedies, dramas, gangster films, action adventures, Westerns, science fiction, musical comedies. But no matter the genre, he would make a quintessentially Hawksian film.

Favoring a simple, clear visual style, Hawks was an action director par excellence; few filmmakers have rivaled his speed. Making the transition from silent to sound cinema, he found that he could use rapid-fire dialogue to increase narrative velocity. Yet he relied heavily on actions, not words, to convey his characters’ feelings. Hawks’s personal credo that “man is the measure of all things” motivates his filmmaking. First and foremost, the Hawksian hero is measured by his (and, less frequently, her) work, and professionalism and camaraderie are paramount in Hawks’s films.

Continuing through mid-April, this series surveys the full range of the director’s career, including several rarely screened silents. It demonstrates that, like a composer writing a theme and variations, Hawks repeatedly treats the same themes, situations, and actions, transposed from one genre to the next, with a remarkable unity of style.

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Re: Howard Hawks

#38 Post by isakborg » Thu May 30, 2013 7:22 am

Speaking of which, I seem to recall an HTF (?) forum in which a WB representative stated that they were working on "The Big Sky" (whether for archive - most likely - or full release - less likely was not mentioned). Somebody somewhere on this forum mentioned not more than a week ago that his contacts had told him that Archive was preparing Ray's "The Lusty Men", another film I've been waiting for. Perhaps somebody out there has information concerning the Hawks - still in work, dropped? I've seen the 2 1/2 hour long version on the Z channel many years ago, and wonder if delays involve the source material for that part of the film cut in the general release. It was in very poor shape in the Z channel print. The long version also contains some pretty repellent scenes that WB these days might not want to be associated with. E.g., Douglas and Dewey Martin trading joking one-liners back and forth as they each, in friendly competition, take aim and pick off one marauding Indian after another.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Howard Hawks

#39 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Fri May 31, 2013 3:32 am

Supposedly the only known copies of the long version are two 16mm prints created for armed forces screenings. Scorsese owns one and the other was used for the R2F release (which only uses it for the cut scenes, the rest of the film is from 35mm). TCM occasionally airs their own reconstruction of the long version that reportedly looks better than the R2F--it probably used Scorsese's print, since it was first shown as part of a series of Scorsese-selected films. It looks like they'll air it again on August 30th.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Howard Hawks

#40 Post by hearthesilence » Fri May 31, 2013 10:39 am

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Supposedly the only known copies of the long version are two 16mm prints created for armed forces screenings. Scorsese owns one and the other was used for the R2F release (which only uses it for the cut scenes, the rest of the film is from 35mm). TCM occasionally airs their own reconstruction of the long version that reportedly looks better than the R2F--it probably used Scorsese's print, since it was first shown as part of a series of Scorsese-selected films. It looks like they'll air it again on August 30th.
Damn, thanks for the heads up!

Back in 2010, Lincoln Center actually screened the Film Foundation's restoration of The Big Sky, which most likely used Scorsese's 16mm print for the missing scenes. I couldn't see it - it was the day after Christmas and I wasn't in NY - but it hasn't been shown around here since. I've only seem crappy video copies of this film, so I'll definitely look forward to this.

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Re: Howard Hawks

#41 Post by Iamhere » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:34 pm

Saw this article on His Girl Friday and about it's dark tone: http://www.jeremyizzo.com/his-girl-friday-and-tone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I wonder what does make the film work, ignoring the darker stuff? Is this the darkest of Hawks work?

I like hawks comedies, but I don't laugh out loud enough to recommend them to people. I find them charming and fun. I can watch them a lot, but I don't think I'll ever buy my own copy. I'm having a debate about whether Bringing up Baby or His Girl Friday is the best.

I found this: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~03voroby/1224884.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; from Izzo's facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fighting ... 551?ref=hl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's nice to see other opinions on screwball than cavell. Now i'm in a debate of who I agree with more, cavell or shumway.

Another blog on Bringing up baby: http://altscreen.com/06/20/2011/howard- ... ilm-forum/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Gregory
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Re: Howard Hawks

#42 Post by Gregory » Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:25 pm

Iamhere wrote:I found this: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~03voroby/1224884.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; from Izzo's facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fighting ... 551?ref=hl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's nice to see other opinions on screwball than cavell. Now i'm in a debate of who I agree with more, cavell or shumway.
There's been a decent amount published about screwball comedy that goes far beyond Cavell. For anyone interested in analysis of notions of marriage, the couple, desire, etc. in these films, I'd highly recommend Kathrina Glitre's book Hollywood Romantic Comedy: States of the Union 1934-65. The scope of the book is much broader than just screwball, but her second chapter is on the latter and engages closely with both Cavell and Shumway.

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domino harvey
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Re: Howard Hawks

#43 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:31 pm

Gregory, does Glitre's book focus any on the Hollywood sex comedies of the early 60 (Doris Day, Sex and the Single Girl, etc)?

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Matt
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Re: Howard Hawks

#44 Post by Matt » Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:36 pm

I'm not Gregory, but yes. Check out the Google Books preview.

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Re: Howard Hawks

#45 Post by Iamhere » Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:22 pm

Never heard of that book. Looks great. Screwball seems to be a tired term. I'm not really sure what it means anymore. It seems like saying a "gangster" film which after reading steve neales book on genre it looks like there are only three or four true "gangster" films (hawks directing one of them). He makes a good point. The same seems to go for screwball as many are now thrown into the group.

Is it like Film noir...a genre based solely on tone?

I think the sex comedies of the 60s don't share the same tone. The last screwball (as far as my own small opinion goes) was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes even though it's a "musical"

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Gregory
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Re: Howard Hawks

#46 Post by Gregory » Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:59 pm

Yeah, questions of genre and definition seem to me too huge to tackle. I'll leave it to those writing essay and book-length works dealing with those matters, though just yesterday here there was some discussion (again) of what noir is in relation to Welles. And not only what belongs within a genre comes up in our genre list projects on the forum, and it's clear that no two members will have exactly the same understanding of genre. I think it's hard not to deal with the vagueness by slipping into too loose a definition. Many of the studios (such as Sony with their film noir and screwball sets) will market things under that banner that really don't fit, but some may disagree.

Screwball had a heyday before World War II but then continued to be present in comedies into the '50s and beyond, in my opinion. One of the last ones in the period before the New Hollywood of the '60s was Hawks's Man's Favorite Sport, a tribute to Bringing Up Baby that wasn't even in the same realm as that one, and could understandably be considered a failure, but I couldn't help but enjoy certain things about it. There have been occasional revivals of screwball post-Classical Hollywood too of course.

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Re: Howard Hawks

#47 Post by Iamhere » Thu Jun 20, 2013 3:45 pm

Seeing the picture of the article on the hompage:http://www.jeremyizzo.com/ reminded me of that shot.
It's the only real drastic angle hawks ever used in that film or any other. He doesn't mention it in the article but that is a drastic change in tone. Even his film noir Big Sleep doesn't have harsh angles like that. That whole scene in the jail is haunting the way he stays out of the cage.
If we are to believe that noir started a year after His Girl Friday than we can say the influence comes from German Expressionism. But could we just say that these thin termed genres aren't really sub divisions of types but instead just historical art movements like expressionism, realism, surrealism, construtionism, poetic realism and so on.

Because for some reason Hawks put equally fast talking witty dialogue in The Big Sleep as he did in His Girl Friday yet the tone seems darker than that "noir."

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Gregory
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Re: Howard Hawks

#48 Post by Gregory » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:18 pm

I wasn't sure what you meant by "that shot" at first because I didn't see any earlier discussion of it, but going to the site you mention I see the His Girl Friday shot you must be referring to. Hawks was very restrained with camerawork, making his style more about the "world" put in front of the camera, the dialogue, his actors, and the style of their performances and interaction than about trademark uses of camera angles, camera movement, elaborate montage, etc. Still, it's not quite true that the shot in question was the only time he used extreme angles. That great scene in Rio Bravo comes to mind, where Chance and Dude go into the bar to find the man with mud on his boots. The way Hawks used the space there created great suspense. Lesser filmmakers move the camera around for no real reason and put it way above the actors for no effective reason, but Hawks wasn't the kind to do it just to do it.

As for moments of darkness in the comedies, Hawks liked to blend tones and genres and not making conventional comedies based on joke material, and he liked to insert elements of comedy into films that were ostensibly not comedies. Robin Wood's book on Hawks (the first written about the director, I believe) argued that Scarface was a comedy, for example.

And yeah, I think film noir is more of a style, tendency, or mode of filmmaking than a genre (conventionally speaking); the genre would be crime. I think it's closely related to melodrama as well, but that opens another question of how to define a genre.

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Re: Howard Hawks

#49 Post by Iamhere » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:38 pm

It's funny. My first introduction to Hawks was Rio Bravo because my Dad loved Wayne. It wasn't until latter (much latter) i realized how truly awesome Rio Bravo was (most likely because I was watching for Hawks like style). As a kid I thought it was just another Wayne western action movie, but as I learned I noticed how good of a real film it is.

That silent opening, the sing along and the scene you mentioned.

I think the reason why Hawks is well liked is for the reasons you mentioned of him blending things together. I think it goes to show he wasn't interested in being an artist as much as he was interested in entertaining and telling a story smoothly.

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Gregory
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Re: Howard Hawks

#50 Post by Gregory » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:49 pm

I just found this in Joseph McBride's great interview book, Hawks on Hawks.
McBride: Some of your comedies actually get pretty grim at times. ... The predicaments the people get into become rather harrowing. Bringing up Baby, particularly in the later scenes is so dark photographically, it's lit almost like a tragedy.
Hawks: Well, it was pretty sad for Cary Grant going around on his hands and knees looking for a bone.
How do you write comic dialogue?
I don't use funny lines. They're not funny unless you see them. ... They become funny because of their attitudes, because of the attitudes that work against what they're trying to say. And to me, that's the funniest comedy in the world. In Rio Bravo, the fellow in jail said about Walter Brennan, "Look, that guy, he—don't trust him! He'll shoot me! He's crazy!" Brennan laughed. He thought that was marvelous, to be called crazy. He said, "You know, I'm just nuts!" People laughed at that. Because usually the idea is for a man when he's called crazy to get angry.
There's a lot more in there about comedy.

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