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.
|