criterionforum.org

Howard Hawks (1896-1977)




I try to tell my story as simply as possible, with
the camera at eye level. I just imagine the way
the story should be told, and I do it. If it's a
scene that I don't want anybody to monkey with
or cut, I don't give them any way to cut it. If I
think that it's a little too long and the actors are
dawdling and I want to cut some of it out, I
make two angles so that I can cut it. That's
about all I can say about it. I like to tell it with
a simple scene. I don't want you to be conscious
that this is dramatic, because it throws it all off.


Filmography

The Road to Glory (1926)

Fig Leaves (1926)

The Cradle Snatchers (1927)

Paid to Love (1927)

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

Fazi (1928)

The Air Circus (1928)

Trent's Last Case (1929)

The Dawn Patrol (1930)

The Criminal Code (1931)

Scarface (1932) Universal (R1 & R2 UK)

The Crowd Roars (1932)

Tiger Shark (1932)

La Foule hurle (co-directed w. John Daumery, 1932)

Today We Live (1933)

Twentieth Century (1934) Columbia (R1)

Barbary Coast (1935) MGM (R1)

Ceiling Zero (1936)

The Road to Glory (1936)

Come and Get It (co-directed with William Wyler, 1936) MGM (R1)

Bringing Up Baby (1938) Warner Brothers (R1) Editions Montparnasse (R2 FR)

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) Columbia (R1 & R2 UK)

His Girl Friday (1940) Columbia (R1 & R2 UK)

Sergeant York (1941) Warner Brothers (R1)

Ball of Fire (1941) MGM (R1, coming May, 2007)

Air Force (1943) Warner Bros. (R1, part of WWII Collection 2 released June, 2007)

To Have and Have Not (1944) Warner Brothers (R1)

The Big Sleep (1946) Warner Bros. (R1)

Red River (1948) Red River (R1 & R2 UK)

A Song Is Born (1948)

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) 20th Century Fox (R1) Optimum (R2)

The Thing From Another World (1951) uncredited - produced by Hawks, and assisted Christian Nyby - Warner (R1 & R2 UK) Universal (R2 UK) Editions Montparnasse (R2 FR)

The Big Sky (1952) Editions Montparnasse (R2 FR)

Monkey Business (1952) 20th Century Fox (R1 & R2 UK)

O. Henry's Full House (segment "The Ransom of Red Chief", 1952) 20th Century Fox (R1)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) 20th Century Fox (R1 & R2 UK)

Land of the Pharaohs (1955) Warner Brothers (R1)

Rio Bravo (1959) Warner Brothers (R1)

Hatari! (1962) Paramount (R1 & R2 UK)

Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) Universal (R1)

Red Line 7000 (1965)

El Dorado (1966) Paramount (R1 & R2 UK)

Rio Lobo (1970) Paramount (R1)


Forum Discussions

Ball of Fire

The Big Sky

The Big Sky (screen caps and discussion of the Editions Montparnasse edition)

Bringing Up Baby

Gary Cooper: The Signature Collection (includes discussion on Sergeant York)

To Have and Have Not

Twentieth Century


Web Resources

Senses of Cinema


Books

Hawks on Hawks - Joseph McBride (Faber and Faber, 1996)

Howard Hawks - Joseph McBride (Prentice Hall, 1972)

Howard Hawks - Robin Wood (Wayne State University Press, 2006)

Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood - Todd McCarthy (Grove Press, 1997)

Howard Hawks: Interviews - Scott Breivold, editor (University Press of Mississippi, 2006))

Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich (Ballantine Books, 1998) - includes more than 100 pages of interviews with Hawks.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a film-related blog which introduced its subject with this first line:

Howard Hawks, in my not-so-humble-opinion, is the greatest director you have never heard of.

Never heard of Hawks? The blogger, one Gordon Dymowski, describes himself fittingly in these words:

I'm a slightly intellectual health policy wonk who lives in Chicago and who likes comics. Movies. Books. Pop Culture.

Ah yes. Slightly intellectual.
Reminds me of Barry Purves' famous story: After the success of his animated Shakespeare run-through NEXT, a TV producer offered him to do something along those lines featuring some other figure of cultural importance. When Purves suggested he'd like to tackle Hitchcock, the producer asked, "Who's Hitchcock?" (and it was not in jest).

Did he really equate Cary Grant and Bill Murray?

I love that the blogger is incapable of going into specific ideas about the film because he has none-- other than what appears to be things he heard his instructor say, which he then blindly attributes to the film without examination.

That's just like something Bill Murray would have said in his 1980s heyday.

I would add Viva Villa! to that list of his filmography, even if a large bulk of it was directed by Jack Conway. Hawks is certainly one of the all time greats, it would be nice if particularly some of his earlier films got a DVD release.

wpqx wrote:Hawks is certainly one of the all time greats, it would be nice if particularly some of his earlier films got a DVD release.

Or some of his later masterpieces: The Big Sky (my favorite Hawks western) and Red Line 7000.

I thought the Big Sky was on DVD? I got mine from TCM years ago and wasn't particularly impressed with it. I'd still probably put either El Dorado or Rio Bravo as my favorite Hawks western, agreed on Red Line though that needs to come out.

wpqx wrote:I thought the Big Sky was on DVD? I got mine from TCM years ago and wasn't particularly impressed with it. I'd still probably put either El Dorado or Rio Bravo as my favorite Hawks western, agreed on Red Line though that needs to come out.

Editions Montparnasse released The Big Sky on an R2 DVD, but it's not yet been released on R1 -- and is a glaring omission. In my opinion, The Big Sky is a better movie than El Dorado, but not quite as sublime as either Red River or Rio Bravo. Of his Westerns, it's probably the clearest example of Hawks' interest in character(ization) over plot. It is also, of course, based on one of the greatest Western novels of all time -- one that transcends the genre.

What do people think about Come and Get It? I saw it recently as I've been tying up Hawks-related odds and ends and was surprised at how much I liked it. For a bastard production, the final product was pretty great.

tryavna wrote:Editions Montparnasse released The Big Sky on an R2 DVD, but it's not yet been released on R1

Based on the Beaver grabs, the quality is rather poor. This really deserves a good R1 release. Masterpiece it is, and quite a bit different from his other Westerns (all of which I think are sublime - with the exception of Rio Lobo).

EDIT: Sorry, this was already discussed in the Editions Montparnasse thread.

A moderator needs to add McCarthy's book on Hawks, the Grey Fox of Hollywood, to the first post. It's an essential read for anyone interested in the man and his films.

Come and Get It is out on DVD from MGM in R1.

Mike Schlesinger of Sony has recently said they hope to release The Criminal Code(it's a Columbia film).

Well Hawks was a bit of a journeyman filmmaker worked with nearly every major studio so a complete boxed set is probably not possible, because getting movie studios to agree on things like this is about as easy as peace in the middle east. I have a recording of The Crowd Roars via TCM somewhere in my attic and until that gets on DVD that'll be the only way I'll probably see it. I'm at least glad that his Scarface was finally released as a stand alone DVD.

Jonathan S wrote:Mike Schlesinger of Sony has recently said they hope to release The Criminal Code(it's a Columbia film).

That's probably my favorite of Hawks' pre-Bringing Up Baby works. (It inches ahead of both Scarface and Twentieth Century in terms of my own enjoyment.) I also love the way Bogdanovich uses a clip from it in Targets -- especially the way Karloff rolls his eyes and says "I know" when Boggy says "That's Howard Hawks" in the movie.

I saw The Crowd Roars for the first time a couple of months ago and was somewhat disappointed with it. Then again, it often takes me several viewings to actually like some of Hawks' early- and mid-1930s work. Is anyone else like that? I found that I immediately adored just about every one of Hawks' movies from 1938 on, but that immediate connection just isn't there with the earlier stuff. Quite odd, I"ve always thought, but there it is. (Perhaps for the same reason, I've never cared a great deal for Come and Get It; it's fun and doesn't really show the seams of the two directors' work, but it still doesn't quite cohere for me.)

tryavna wrote:Then again, it often takes me several viewings to actually like some of Hawks' early- and mid-1930s work. Is anyone else like that? I found that I immediately adored just about every one of Hawks' movies from 1938 on, but that immediate connection just isn't there with the earlier stuff. Quite odd, I"ve always thought, but there it is. (Perhaps for the same reason, I've never cared a great deal for Come and Get It; it's fun and doesn't really show the seams of the two directors' work, but it still doesn't quite cohere for me.)

When I first saw pre-38 Hawks I was a little disconcerted as well (and to me he's one of the two or three greatest directors). Now I think what threw me off is the much more neurotic tone in these movies, which often move towards conventionally melodramatic male hysteria (ie Tiger Shark, The Road to Glory, The Dawn Patrol) and are much more ambivalent about the heroes' professional impassivity, which edges much closer to irresponsibility (especially in Road to Glory and Ceiling Zero); they're much less "cooler" films, in several senses, and it was only after I saw several that I started to "get" them. The early films still a mixed bag in my opinion, and to some extent seem to be Hawks working stuff out of his system and figuring out what's a "Hawks film", but they're still fascinating--besides the obvious landmarks like Scarface and Twentieth Century, Ceiling Zero is one of my favorites and Hawks' best flying movie imo.

That's an interesting point about the general pace of early 30s action--I hadn't thought of it before, but it seems that Walsh, Rowland Brown, LeRoy, Wellman, etc move as fast, if not more, than Hawks but don't quite have the same tone. They're all directors more innately comfortable with those melodramatic suicide/sacrifice stories, whereas Hawks' edge comes from the fact that he can't quite put that material (which he still seems to believe in at this stage) together with his sense of a "cooler" masculinity. And you're certainly right about Furthman's importance in solidifying Hawks' tone: Sternberg is obviously a genius, but I probably like Docks of New York and Shanghai Express best in large part for Furthman's scripts, and anyone who can be a central voice for both Nightmare Alley and Rio Bravo, say, deserves all the praise he can get.

Very interesting conversation, guys. And I think you've hit the nail on the head regarding pacing, edginess, and tone of the early 1930s work. I also have to confess that I have much the same problem with "pre-Code" Hollywood films in general: I generally have to grow to like them on a case-by-case basis, as I'm not predisposed to immediately love them as so many members of this forum are. I believe this is just a personality issue and says more about me than about the films themselves. I guess I simply prefer the more laconic pacing of Hawks' work from 1938-39 onwards, which is as Richard Schickel once pointed out "the special glory" of his mature films.

I feel pretty much the same way about pre-Code; when it's great it's great, but in general it isn't any more compelling than non-Hollywood and post-Code 30s movies. It might be a personality issue, as you say, but that cuts both ways; I think that sometimes the enthusiasm for pre-Code verges on a condescending, "oh, they knew about sex/sadism/fill-in-the-blank all along too" kind of attitude, though obviously there are many other sophisticated and intelligent reasons for admiring them.

I now have reviews up of Twentieth Century - this really blew me away with how fun it is - and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I'm getting ready to go on a real big Hawks kick now, catching up on lots of his stuff that I haven't seen yet.

I've just announced the Early Hawks Blog-a-Thon at my blog, running from January 12-23, 2009. I'll be watching all of the Hawks films I can get my hands on from before Bringing Up Baby (my arbitary boundary line for "early"), and I hope that many other people will participate and join me. If you have any questions about getting ahold of the films, let me know.

I'll be reading your posts on early Hawks with interest. With the exception of Scarface, which is deservedly well known, these films are ripe for reassessment, if only they were easier to obtain.
About half of his surviving pre-Bringing Up Baby films have been released on DVD and/or VHS, but I've never been able to see the rest:
Fig Leaves
Cradle Snatchers
Paid to Love
Fazil
Trent's Last Case
Dawn Patrol
The Crowd Roars
Tiger Shark
Today We Live
I'd particularly love to see the Murnau-influenced Paid to Love, even if it did turn out to be a mere curiosity.

If that's supposed to be a list of films not available on VHS or DVD, Viva Villa is

Thanks, fixed. I don't know how I forgot that one is out on VHS, as I know my local library has it. From what I've read about it, I expect it to be a case of the story of the production being more interesting than the film itself.

The Crowd Roars is a pretty fun little movie, with quite a few Hawks' trademarks. Firstly there is the conflict between brotherly relationships and romantic relationships. James Cagney and Eric Linden are the two brothers who end up falling out in part due to women, before eventually realizing that their relationship is most important.

The setting is also very Hawksian with Cagney and Linden as race-car drivers, a dangerous profession where men can be men ala the pilots of a half dozen of Hawks' films, or say the animal wranglers in Hatari!.

The racing footage actually holds up very well, as it blends stock footage, and actual location filming to create some very exciting sequences. Hawks always had a feel for action, and this is no exception.

Finally Hawks uses the familiar theme of a man being broken, defeated, and eventually redeemed by his work. Much of the plot revolves around Cagney's inability to get behind the wheel after being involved in a fatal crash. His character is a spiritual predecessor to Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, and Richard Barthelmess in Only Angels Have Wings.

The film is by no means a major work, but it's pretty solid.