Howard Hawks

[FrauBlucher]

The Mars' men was the only one I figured out while watching.

[Big Ben]

Great image. Thanks for the share!

[HJackson]

Although of course, in the film, Lundgren is just a really loyal employee of Geiger's.

[domino harvey]

Kino Lorber is releasing Red Line 7000 on Blu-ray!

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Kino Lorber is releasing Red Line 7000 on Blu-ray!

Wow! I can't believe this is finally coming out. I can get rid of my laserdisc now! I never understood why this film has been unavailable for so many years.

[domino harvey]

Sgt York just got a limited edition Blu-ray release in Germany

[sabbath]

Sgt York just got a limited edition Blu-ray release in Germany

It's a sort of WWII propaganda film (at least it worked that way after the Pearl Harbor) about a guy who became one of the most-decorated American war hero in WWI by killing Germans like turkeys... and Germany became the first country to release it on Blu-ray

[Kauno]

Sgt York just got a limited edition Blu-ray release in Germany

It's a sort of WWII propaganda film (at least it worked that way after the Pearl Harbor) about a guy who became one of the most-decorated American war hero in WWI by killing Germans like turkeys... and Germany became the first country to release it on Blu-ray

SchröderMedia is an Austrian company, I belive. Well Austrians were nazis or nazi sympathizers too.

[John Shade]

Sgt York just got a limited edition Blu-ray release in Germany

It's a sort of WWII propaganda film

That's true of many of the great P&P films too I guess. I like this one regardless of the lightning and the hokey moments or political whatnot. I assume this restoration means it's going to come to the U.S. for us region locked folks eventually.

[domino harvey]

Given the deluxe treatment Warners gave it, I imagine it'll be coming from the Archives or Criterion soon enough

[Satori]

I watched the new Kino Blu-ray of Redline 7000 last night. It’s such a delight to see a high quality transfer of the film after having having previously seen it only via a fullscreen VHS rip. I also think it’s quite an interesting film, especially in the context of the period that I think of as late Hawks.

The film is a departure from the usual Hawksian group dynamics: while the collectives in the adventure films are usually united against an external threat, here the group of race car drivers fight amongst themselves throughout the film. While there are some precedents for internal fighting, notably in Red River, the groups in late Hawks seem particularly solid. While Dean Martin or Mitchum might temporarily lose their way, their loyalty to the group is never in question. In Redline, the group members betray and even try to kill each other. It seems to me that the Hawksian group in Redline is not actually the race car drivers, but the women in the film. The bar owned by Lindy (late Hawks regular Charlene Holt) functions like the jail in Rio Bravo. Lindy is like Chance, slowly collecting members of her group: first Holly, who buys in as a partner so that they can expand the bar, and then Julie, who the girls take in after her racer boyfriend leaves her. While men enter the nightclub, it remains a female space. The key scenes are the ones in which the bar is closed and the women are the only ones there. Redline even has a musical number performed solely by women, something Hawks has long used to affirm group solidarity. While the men fight amongst themselves and often hurt or betray the women, the women remain steadfast in their loyalty to each other. While the film’s gender politics are still problematic by today's standards—the male/female relationships are actually pretty toxic—such a sustained focus on female friendships is still remarkable.

Perhaps most importantly, Redline helps illuminate the interest in female friendships that occurs throughout late Hawks. In addition to the group dynamic, the friendship between Holly and “Gabby” is especially developed. They converse in French, much to the chagrin of the men, who can’t understand what they are saying. The scenes of them chatting away in French are a delight. This kind of pairing is echoed in other Hawks films, most notably Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which Lorelei and Dorothy’s friendship motors the entire plot. We also get a community of women on the periphery of Rio Lobo: while Shasta (Jennifer O’Neil) is a more typical Hawksian woman who hangs out with the guys, there are the two women in the town of Rio Lobo itself, Amelita and Maria, who help each other out and end up as significant to the overall plot. Finally, there is Man’s Favorite Sport, in which Paula Prentiss’ character has a faithful sidekick, nicknamed “Easy,” who functions analogously to the Water Brennan characters—whether played by him or not—in the John Wayne films. In some ways this is the most interesting case because of how unimportant Easy seems to the overall narrative structure. Her function is largely comedic as she and Prentiss gang up on Hudson, but she also suggests that Prentiss has a full life outside of her eventual romance with Hudson.

I’m not sure if this dynamic has been noted in Hawks scholarship or not, even though much ink has been spilled on the Bacall/Dickenson version of the Hawksian woman. The female friendships are a perfectly logical extension of the male friendships so central to the Hawksian vision. Plus, Hawks’s women have always been as dynamic and interesting as the men, so it makes perfect sense that they would also join forces in these partnerships. These friendships just seem remarkable given the increasing marginalization of women in the Hollywood cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. They feel more like 1930s characters than anything else: the partnerships in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Man’s Favorite Sport in particular remind me of the amazing Joan Blondell/ Glenda Farrell films.

The reason that this comes about in late Hawks might have more to do with the looser narrative structures and longer running times of these films, giving him more time to develop the lives and relationships of all the characters. Redline 7000 certainly seems like a crucial piece of this component of late Hawks.

[Feego]

I just watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the first time last night, and I couldn't agree more with Satori about the relationship between Lorelei and Dorothy. Their camaraderie was what struck me most about the film, and the way both are willing to stick their neck out for each other (even if Lorelei's methods are a little misguided and result in setting her friend up on a blind date with a little boy!). Jane Russell's Dorothy very much reminds me of the classic Hawksian woman, completely at home with the boys and very open about her sexual interests in a way that was typically reserved for men at this time but wouldn't have been out of place in a 1930s film (props to Anita Loos here as well). I watched How to Marry a Millionaire the previous night, and I now realize that one of the things that film was glaringly lacking was a strong bond between the women. Both films concern women out to snag rich husbands, but where Millionaire simply features a gaggle of characters getting themselves into shenanigans, Gentlemen is anchored by women who register as real friends, and thus we relate more to their plight. The musical numbers, all of which I believe were performed by Lorelie and Dorothy, also firmly reflect a female perspective, with Monroe's iconic "Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend" not celebrating materialism so much as being used to tell her man, "I can get along just fine without you." And the infamous "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love" does a marvelous job of countering the male gaze, starting off with a group of women gathered to watch the male Olympians, who then parade in near-nude, synchronized anonymity.

[Satori]

I agree completely! In addition to comparing it to other contemporaneous films, I think the importance of Lorelei and Dorothy's friendship also really comes into focus when compared with the novel. Since the book is narrated from Lorelei's perspective, we only get to know Dorothy as filtered through Lorelei. Dorothy is pretty much just a wise ass who speaks her mind, much to Lorelei's chagrin. While we do get the equivalent of Lorelei trying to set up Dorothy with rich men and a concern for her "cultural enrichment," this is all treated with even more irony than in the film. More importantly, we never really see Dorothy taking care of Lorelei as she does in the film. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Dorothy tells the detective that she is the only one allowed to make fun of Lorelei, completely shutting down his attempt to drive a wedge between them. The whole film is based on their relationship, from the opening number to the incredible double wedding in which the camera moves in, lopping off the men at their sides to focus on them.

I love the novel-- not only does it hilariously and incisively unpack ideas about gender, class, and sex, but I think its stream of consciousness narration and playful use of language make it a masterpiece of modernist literature that holds its own against the work of Faulkner and Joyce, both of whom were fans of it. However, it is only the film that places the women's friendship at the center. Given Hawks' self-proclaimed "love stories between men" and focus on deep male friendships throughout his work, I think the film's focus on Lorelei and Dorothy's bond makes perfect sense. Gentlemen comes at a weird time in Hawk's career, but I think its wonderful how its depiction of female friendship seems to find its way into almost all of his post-Rio Bravo work.

[domino harvey]

While Satori offers a noble defense of Red Line 7000 above, this was one of my last remaining gaps in Hawks' oeuvre and I can now safely declare it to be his worst. It is at times almost unbelievably bad-- all of the actors address each other in a stilted fashion as though none of them shared the same soundstage, and the various interpersonal mechanations are tortuous. There is no real plot (not unusual for late period Hawks), but the "hang out" structure doesn't work when an audience hates every cipher on screen. The film is perhaps only of interest in how it furthers or alters traditional Hawksian tropes, but I found it bordering on cruel and unusual punishment to make my way through all of this one.

[Drucker]

An IB Tech print? Leaving work at 3:00 on a Friday. Howard Hawks! What could go wrong? Hatari could go wrong. A film that I can't find any discussion about on this website, but was seriously tough to get through. The only explanation I can think of for this film is that Hawks was just super cocky, because the execution here really goes nowhere.

The set-up is fine. Hawksian tale of ragged group of people that work in a dangerous field and whose social lives revolve around each other. A few outsiders come in and shake things up. A girl appears and she's out to prove she could be one of the guys. But instead we get alternating scenes of capturing animals and animal related slapstick. The outsider who introduces himself by getting punched in the face? Well after an interesting introduction, we lose him for 45 minutes, he comes back, punches the other guy in the face, and then the two form an inept and boring friendship. We barely see much of Wayne and his photographer's friend's relationship, but you can believe that Wayne isn't paying enough attention to her and she's going to run away because we find out about 2 hours into the film.

Are there some interesting shots? Sure. Is the first animal chase scene pretty good? Fine. Do we need to see it...5 times? No. In the few Hawks films I've seen, there's always a central conflict holding the laid back story together. Not here. The comedy's not funny. The people are never in what seems to be any danger. And at over 2.5 hours there's very little story stretched way too thin.

Does this film have any serious defenders? Besides apparently being at the top of the Cahiers list?

[Rayon Vert]

Well I strangely often find myself agreeing a lot of the time with the (50s-early 60s) Cahiers critics, and this is another one of those times - indeed, a favorite of mine. I don't know that I have a "serious" defense of it, though. Starting with Rio Bravo, Hawks altered his style into something a lot more leisurely. I like this for what this is, as you said the Hawksian professional-group-as-family but in an (admittedly feather-light) extended safari romp. But I do tend to have a soft spot for films that have a minimal, vignette-style narrative like this (a bit Ford-like in some ways). I also like that cast of actors and characters, with a very competent, low-key Wayne. (I've sometimes wondered if the fact that there's two French actors here, and a French-accented Italian lead actress, was because Hawks knew of the French's admiration for him?) The fact that it's long just means that I can get lost in it even more.

The animal and action sequences are appealing and very well done (sort of like the real Jurassic Park – indeed Spielberg copied some of those shots for The Lost World). I've never tried analyzing the film too deeply, but perhaps there's a parallel here to be evoked between the animal-catching storylines and the romantic mate-catching ones.

[Rayon Vert]

Matthew Thrift at BFI also thinks it's a winner:

It’s Hawks’ ultimate hang-out movie, the one best indicative of his relaxed late-style. There’s no antagonist, little by way of plot (although its African savannah setting allows for a number of astounding set-pieces) and barely any stakes, but its gentle humour and touching interpersonal dynamics prove impossible to resist. It may play like a Hawks greatest hits package – with Duke’s screen persona in for its most affectionate ribbing – but when the hits are this good…

[Michael Kerpan]

I saw Hatari when it first came out (albeit only when it made it to our local drive-in). I remember being somewhat amused.

[domino harvey]

Man's Favorite Sport? coming to Blu-ray from Universal next month!