1962 - HATARI, or the world of the Howard Hawk's boys club

When film critics and scholars talk about the auteur theory they frequently point to one film maker, Howard Hawks.

 

Hawks stayed fairly consistent during his working career as a director.  He liked the world of men, especially professional men out doing a dangerous job and not acting like a bunch of crybabies about it when it got tough.  The women in a Hawks film are usually very good looking and just about as tough as the men they are involved with.

Hawks and his writer Leigh Brackett developed these themes in many different pictures, such as Rio Bravo,  El Dorado, Rio Lobo and Red River to name a few.  At his best Hawks was good at working with actors and providing the audience with one entertaining scene after the other.  For a number of years Hawks was a very dependable director of very good commercial films.

 

Hatari is very much a Hawks film in that is has practically no story.  Hawks is basically interested in hanging out with a group of very cool people.  The film's action highlights involve the group catching animals in Africa to ship to zoos around the world.  John Wayne is the leader of the group and at this point is his career was older and didn't care to do love scenes with younger women.  Hawks being Hawks sets up a romance between Wayne and the gorgeous Elsa Martinelli which Hawks enjoys mainly becasuse it plays on Wayne's discomfort in his scenes with her.

Hatari is a fun film which is overlong and probably could have used a few less animal capture scenes as the film runs 157 minutes.  Still if you are in the right mood Hatari is very entertaining.