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.

1946 - THE BIG SLEEP, the classic Hollywood mystery

A Raymond Chandler mystery so entertaining that anyone watching this film and trying to follow the plot will have their hands full.  The film is so confusing it has a murder in it that is unaccounted for.

This was the second teaming of Howard Hawks, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  Bacall's career was in trouble after appearing in a picture called Confidential Agent which turned out to be a real stinker.  Hooking up with Hawks and Bogart again turned out to be a very smooth move on the part of her agent.

 

Hawks is at his peak period here, directing actors and getting the best out of them.  Bogart has another career defining role as detective Phillip Marlowe who is as good with a wise crack as a gun.  Besides Bacall who is at her sultry best as Vivian Rutledge there is a nymphomaniac sister Carmen, played by Martha Vickers who is very good but had her part cut down to emphasize Bacall. 

Mention should be made of the actor Charles Waldron playing the father of Bacall and Vickers.  It's a short part but really memorable.

Hawks did a good job putting this film together but it doesn't hurt to have three top screenwriters, William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman working on your screenplay.  The film runs 114 minutes.

1944 - TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, Bogie meets Baby.

To Have and Have Not was clearly made to capitalize on another wartime romance, Casablanca, Howard Hawks teamed up 19 year old Lauren Bacall with 45 year Humphrey Bogart.  As they say the romantic sparks practically flew off the screen.

 

In a lot of ways this is almost a plot-less film.  Hawk's interest seemed to be mostly devoted to having his two leads take smart with each other throughout the film.  The result is a highly entertaining love story.

 I guess it doesn't need to be repeated that Bacall and Bogart married in real life.  The film is generally considered a high point in Hawk's career and is an excellent example of quality 1940's film making.

The screenplay was by old Hollywood pro Jules Furthman and William Faulkner of all people.  The film runs 100 minutes.

1932 - SCARFACE: The Shame of the Nation

This is a very violent 30's gangster film to put it mildly.  The film is based on the life of Al Capone and was written by the legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, produced by Howard Hughes and directed by Howard Hawks.

Scarface is considered a classic in the gangster genre and it probably is a classic but be forewarned this is a very 1930's film with a definite 1930's vibe to it particularly in the acting and the overall pacing

I don't recall Howard Hawks directing a film like this one with lots of artsy photography and symbolism. It's very different from the style he developed later in his career.

Still, the film isn't dull, there is plenty of machine gun action and Paul Muni's performance as the sort of stupid but very violent gangster is interesting to see.

95 minutes.

1948 - RED RIVER, Criterion's impressive BLU-RAY

 

 

 

 

HAWKS DIRECTS WAYNE AND CLIFF

127 minutes.

1943 - AIR FORCE, Howard Hawk's World War II propaganda epic

Howard Hawks set out to make the propaganda film to end all propaganda films during World War II. He hired Dudley Nichols who was frequently associated with John Ford's films and had William Faulkner to do some unedited rewrites.  The result is a very good propaganda film that in a lot of ways still holds up considering the source and period.

 

 Hawks primarily used Warner's character actors with only John Garfield as the most notable star and even he is billed 9th in the cast.  The plot concerns the crew of the bomber Mary-Ann flying to Pearl Harbor just as the Japanese attack.  This is an actual incident that occurred during the start of the war. From there the film focuses on how the crew works together to take the fight to the Japanese.

For what this film is, it's a very good Hawks film.  Air Force has all of his trademarks, overlapping dialog, good performances especially from John Garfield and John Ridgely and Harry Carey.  Actors like George Tobias and Edward Brophy were always "Johnnie One Notes"  in any film they were in and there was probably nothing Hawks could do about them, but overall the rest of the cast is first rate.

 

 The film also has some pretty good action scenes.  However, the final attack on the Japanese fleet about to invade Australia is ludicrous since it features the Mary-Ann almost single handily blowing up the entire fleet.

This is basically a World War II propaganda film, you have to endure the usual cringing anti Japanese stuff these films are loaded up with.  Still this is a very good Howard Hawks film.

124 minutes

1951 - THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, is starting to fade a bit.

After a while with all trend setting films, imitation and time start to take it's toll.  The Thing From Another World is starting to look a little ragged 60 years later.

Howard Hawk's shot at updating the old Universal monster movie by assembling a good script and a top group of technical professionals still looks pretty good in a lot of ways. Unfortunately so many other films in the intervening years have ripped off so much from this film, it's diminished a lot of the special qualities of the original.  The whole monster on the loose in an isolated setting has been copied by the Alien film series, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Quatermass Experiment, the Re-Animator, to name only a few that come to mind.

Still, the film is extremely well made.  Hawks cleverly cast no stars in this ensemble film, he also used his famous overlapping dialog technique to make them sound like real people.  The film is well photographed and edited.  The action scenes, particularly the attack of the monster in the base with the air force personnel setting it on fire looks very intense.  Someone playing the monster obviously stood there while people threw flaming kerosene on him. 

Dimitri Tiomkin's electronic score isn't up to the same level as Bernard Herrmann's work on Day The Earth Stood Still, Tiomkin was too much of a mainstream film composer to get really radical but it's a decent effort.  The film also has a lot of humor in it to relieve the tension before the next monster attack, a very clever touch.

A lot of thought and hard work went into making The Thing From Another World, it's a good example of a mainstream Hollywood film that is extremely well made in the somewhat dubious science fiction and horror genres.

87 minutes

1952 - THE BIG SKY, big Howard Hawks production in a melancholy mood

The adventures of a keel boat expedition heading up the Missouri river to trade with the Indians. 

This was a big expensive Howard Hawks production.  Kirk Douglas was the star of the film but The Big Sky was really a low key ensemble piece with the actors delivering most of their lines with Howard Hawk's famous overlapping dialog technique.

It's hard to know exactly what Hawks was trying for with this film, he has a number of scenes that are among the best he has every directed. He also has a lot of scenes that seem to go absolutely nowhere.  Hawks really indulges himself with comedy and little character bits throughout the film at the expensive of any kind of narrative.  He has one extended scene where Kirk Douglas has his finger amputated.  Hawks has Douglas play the entire scene as a comedy.

Even the music in this film is unusual for a Hawks film.  The composer Dimitri Tiomkin who usually specialized in bombastic film music wrote one of his most low key scores.

The Big Sky is Howard Hawks at his most laid back, barely bothering with a story, the film is even more plotless than Hatari or Rio Bravo.  There does seem to be an overriding sense of melancholy running throughout the film for people and a time in American history that has now vanished. 

The Big Sky is a beautiful black and white film, photographed on magnificent Grand Teton locations.

122 meandering minutes, screenplay by Dudley Nichols.

1965 - RED LINE 7000, Howard Hawk's "worst" film isn't crap but it's not so hot either

While waiting for John Wayne to become available for El Dorado, Howard Hawks decided to film a story about NASCAR racers and their women.  Red Line 7000 failed with the critics and the audience.  Everyone felt that Hawk's was completely out of touch with the contemporary audience, even Hawks himself thought he blew it. 

Red Line 7000 had two big problems, the story by Howard Hawks himself and some pretty poor acting by a lot of the cast. 

Hawk's film was about the romantic complications of three racers and their girlfriends.  One girl thinks she is bad luck and won't become romantically involved with any racer.  Another is an inexperienced virgin when it comes to men.  James Caan played a driver who won't be involved with a "used" woman.  This film was essentially a 1930's film with some updating for the 1960's crowd.  The whole story however was very outdated for the 1960's.

The acting is not so great either.  Hawks hired some very inexperienced good looking actors, but with the exception of James Caan and some of the supporting cast, they were pretty bad.  Hawks always fancied himself a Svengali when it came to working with young actors, particularly women, but he  didn't have the touch here.  All the women look really good but Hawks directed them to talk in really low voices imitating Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not.

One actor in particular, Gail Hire who was apparently a former model, is pretty poor.  She had the added bad luck of having to do the standard song usually found in a Hawk's film.  Hire's rendition of Nelson Riddle's song "Wildcat Jones" with go-go dancing waitresses is one of the film's extremely ridiculous but unintentionally hilarious low points.  

To further add to the problems in the film, Hawk's filmed a lot of 2nd unit racing footage which had some spectacular crashes in it but didn't match very well with the rear projection scenes of the racers in their cars that were inserted into the footage.  Nelson Riddle's music didn't help much either, Riddle was a great arranger and wrote a couple of cool songs like "Route 66" and the original "Batman" theme, but inspiration seemed to be lacking this time.

Still the film does perk along pretty well.  The car crashes are pretty cool and the women do look good. An interesting antique of a film from a director who had a good run of films almost his entire career.

Hawks had a lot better luck with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in his next picture.

1955 - LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, Howard Hawks very entertaining intimate epic

Howard Hawks stuck has name before the actual title, Land Of The Pharaohs to let the audience know he was the man in charge on this one.  However the movie was not well received by critics or the public and was not a financial success in 1955.  Watching the film today it's difficult to understand why it was so disliked.

The film is about the building of an Egyptian pyramid that will hold the remains of the current pharaoh as he travels to his second life.  Admittedly the film lacks the epic battle scenes usually associated with this kind of film.  But Hawks was more interested in the court intrigue and the actual building of the pyramid than having thousands of extras pretend to fight each other. 

The details of the building of the pyramid are actually rather fascinating.  The thousands of extras deployed in this film demonstrate how such a monumental undertaking may have been accomplished.  Hawks is good at capturing the Pharaoh's obsessiveness without making him seem like a total nutcase.  Land of the Pharaohs also just happens to have one of the greatest endings in the history of movies.

Land Of The Pharaohs is just incredibly well made.  The cinemascope photography and the production design on the film are excellent.  The film composer Dimitri Tiomkin really jacked up the music for this film with a very bombastic score.  Howard Hawks was never known for his flashy camera tricks but he always knew how to get the most out of a scene and always worked with the best technicians.  

Joan Collins plays the evil second wife of the pharaoh and her machinations towards the end of the film do tend to border if not cross the line of melodramatic at times.  But her scheming is very interesting and entertaining.

Somehow William Falkner got mixed up in writing this film for Hawks.  However it seems that Faulkner spent most of his time partying with Howard Hawks and his cronies than actually working on the story.   The real heavy lifting on the script was done by the writer Harry Kurnitz. 

 The criticism of Land Of The Pharaohs as an empty epic seems incredibly unfair.  The Ten Commandments, Cleopatra, Troy and Titanic are also considered epic films but for all their popularity they are very poor films. In  Land of the Pharaohs Howard Hawks at least attempted to film an intelligent spectacle.

106 epic minutes.

144 epic minutes.

1966 - EL DORADO Howard Hawk's self indulgent but highly entertaining western

The screenwriter Leigh Brackett, was so frustrated with Howard Hawks during the production of El Dorado, that she openly referred to the film as "Son of Rio Bravo." But by this point in his career, Howard Hawks was indulging himself to an unparalleled degree. Sticking just about every dumb western cliche and rehash of scenes from his previous films into El Dorado, Howard Hawks was artistically out of control and clearly didn't care.

 

The critics at the time were not impressed with the film and re watching it now it's easy to understand why.  Even the line readings of the actors incorporated some of the famous Howard Hawks overlapping dialog which he had used in his previous films. If Hawks wanted to indulge himself in a trip down memory lane, so be it.

It's interesting to compare the directors Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock at this point in their
careers. Hawks in his early seventies and Hitchcock in his late sixties were winding down their amazing careers with only a few more films left in them.

Their treatment of women in their films at this point in their lives is an interesting contrast between the styles and personalities of these men. Hitchcock pretty much spent the rest of his career sexually obsessing over the actress Tippi Hedren and thinking up inventive ways to stage creepy rape and murder scenes against women in his remaining films

Howard Hawks also had a thing for women and stuck lots of hot looking women in his last couple of films. However Hawks wasn't interested in raping or murdering them, he just had them looking good and talking smart. As he got older, John Wayne no longer wanted to play love scenes with younger women. Hawks made it a point of having Wayne perform with younger actresses to embarrass him.

Hawks cast Robert Mitchum to act opposite John Wayne. Having these two legendary actors and alcoholics play against each other was a great idea. Wayne usually tended to overwhelm most of the actors he played with. But Robert Mitchum had such a strong personality that at times Wayne almost looked like he was underacting. Mitchum recognized the film for what it was, a bunch of foolishness. His mugging and hamming throughout the film was very entertaining.

El Dorado was the the last film photographed by Hal Rosson. Rosson had a long career, he had photographed films like The Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain and parts of Gone With The Wind. El Dorado has lots of beautiful old style Hollywood photography particularly with the use of the color yellow to simulate the evening western sky.

Coming in 20 minutes shorter than Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks still had enough tricks left in him to make El Dorado a box office hit with the audience in 1966, but Hawks must have known that times were changing for his kind of film. Still, you could make the argument that El Dorado is a lot more entertaining in many ways than the very pretentious Rio Bravo.