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Posts tagged ‘Howard Hawks’
June 21, 2011  |  An Auteurist History of Film
Howard Hawks’s Air Force
Air Force. 1943. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

Air Force. 1943. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany the screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>Air Force</a> on June 22, 23, and 24 in Theater 3.</p>

Howard Hawks’s Air Force and John Ford’s They Were Expendable are the cream of a very abundant crop of Hollywood World War II films.

March 1, 2011  |  An Auteurist History of Film
Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby. 1938. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

Bringing Up Baby. 1938. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany the screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>Bringing Up Baby</a> on March 2, 3, and 4 in Theater 3.</p>

Today’s posting is on Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, but more on that in a moment. Last week, in praising George Cukor’s Holiday as a product of the Hollywood studio system, I got off onto a bit of a rant about how bad American commercial films have become since the demise of that system. I was completely unaware that Mark Harris covered a lot of the same ground in the February issue of Esquire, in a piece called “The Day the Movies Died.” Harris had much more space, and he knows a great deal more about contemporary Hollywood than I would ever want to know. Although he holds Inception in much higher esteem than I do, the points he makes about the replacement of storytelling skills and character development by technological gimmickry are essentially the same. I promise you I did not know of Harris’s article before I wrote mine. Honest Injun! Cross my heart!

September 21, 2010  |  An Auteurist History of Film
Howard Hawks’s Scarface: The Shame of a Nation

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation. 1932. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation. 1932. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, September 22, 23, and 24 in Theater 3.</p>

Howard Hawks (1896–1977), in his forty-four year career, was arguably the most consistently successful of all directors in satisfying the commercial demands of the Hollywood studio system while simultaneously maintaining a high level of personal expression in his films. One might say he was the “auteur’s auteur.” It helped a great deal that he was proficient in so many different genres.

July 20, 2010  |  An Auteurist History of Film
Howard Hawks’s The Dawn Patrol

The Dawn Patrol. 1930. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

The Dawn Patrol. 1930. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>The Dawn Patrol, July 21, 22, and 23 in Theater 1.</p>

Like his friendly rival John Ford, Howard Hawks (1896–1977) began work as a Hollywood property man (in Hawks’s case, while still attending school). He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell, and his films reflect both the precision this implies and the erudition of a college boy. (Ford, by contrast, spent about two minutes in college.) After a stint in the Army Air Corps and a job designing airplanes, Hawks wound up directing his first film at the Fox studio—where Ford was also under contract—in 1926.