Howard Hawks

Questions:

1. What is western? What is screwball comedy? Which movies are the outliers? Give examples of the films we’ve watched and explain how each film fit into that genre.
2. Who is Howard Hawks? What is his style? What genre of films did he work in? What are his characters like? Stories? Music? Framing?
3. Read Peter Wollen, “The Auteur Theory”* STUDY THE READING & MEMORIZE IT. Talk about a reading form class that is helpful to understand Hawks’s films -> (Peter Wollen: Expands Sarris’s definition of the auteur giving us a framework to which we can analyze Hawks’s films)
4. What cinematic techniques are often used in the movies we’ve watched? Music? Camera movement? Props? Sound? Explain briefly for each movie.
5. How does the background influence Hawks’ production?

• Hawks tends to be ahistorical and apolitical, removing historical and political subtexts from his films.
• Except Air Force
• Like His Girl Friday, he doesn’t care about history
• Hawks borrows from himself often re-using the same lines and dialogue, i.e., the way women question their identity and profess their love to their male counterparts.
• Interest in Love and Romance in his films
• How women are shown (independent, hysterical, always surround men, traditional?)
• Marilyn (portrayed as dumb blonde)
• Hawks borrows from the personal life of his actors, i.e., Grant and Montgomery Clift’s queerness in Bringing Up Baby and Red River, respectively, Barthlemess’s “redemption” in Only Angels Have Wings.
• Films often focus on the labor of their characters, i.e., wrangling cows and bulls, fixing airplanes, etc.
• Fixing airplane
• Even Gentleman prefers blondes is about dancing and making money
• Manual labor and what that labor means

Action & Adventures:

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Air Force (1943)
Red River (1948)
Rio Bravo (1959)

• Centers on a group of men committed to performing a job.
• Reinforces  a hierarchy of power wherein an alpha male is at the top, followed by his subordinates, then his love-interest, and then ethnic minorities.    
• Reinforces male bonding through fighting together or singing.

Screwball Comedy:

Bringing up Baby (1939)
His Girl Friday (1940)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

• Centers on a hapless man in love with an intelligent woman who takes him along for an adventure.
• Fast-paced and overlapping dialogue with a focus on wit.
• The men in these films are not the adventurous type found in Hawks’s action films, but rather men of art and science.
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• Can be a musical too
• We don’t know where these films are going
• How love interest gets there is a surprised
• People talking at the same time, over each other, fast pace
• Science guy and rich guy and work guy
• He doesn’t have someone like John Wayne because it just doesn’t fit

Drama:

To Have and Have Not
The Big Sleep

• Stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
• Doesn’t fit neatly into one genre.
• An amalgamation of Hawkesian elements.
• Based on novels
• Love in the actors in real life