“I never made a message picture, and I hope I never do.” — Howard Hawks

It’s his birthday today.

My favorite director. I’ve written so much about his movies, here and elsewhere, it’d be too much to link to all of it. I’ve seen it all. Only Angels Have Wings is my favorite movie ever made.

One of the reasons why I do not value the Oscars (beyond the spectacle of a community coming together to celebrate individual accomplishments) is because someone like Howard Hawks – who helped CREATE modern movies – who gave us so many incredible ground-breaking films and gave so many now iconic stars defining roles – was only nominated for one Oscar, and that was for his one message-y film, 1942’s Sergeant York, one of his weakest films, with a saccharine love story completely out of his wheelhouse. He didn’t come alive as a director in this thing – and THAT’S what he was nominated for, because Hollywood liked the patriotic message. Oscars do not equal value. Stop putting too much on them. The one value of Oscars is films are sure to be preserved if they won one of those damn things. And it creates opportunities, etc. But it doesn’t equal success. Plenty of shitty movies have won Oscars. Cary Grant never won one and the two times he was nominated were for “serious” roles, where he cried (Penny Serenade and One for the Lonely Heart.) Roles that have nothing to do with what Cary Grant was – to this day – famous for, one of the most famous movie stars ever. Anyone who continues to think Oscars = Value just has to ignore so much information to the contrary.

Howard Hawks had a run of hits in the late 1930s and 1940s, all of which are now considered classics: Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday – He did those three stone-cold classics in a row. Directors are STILL trying to catch the magic he pulled off in those three movies. (I wrote the booklet essay for Criterion’s release of Bringing Up Baby.)

Other titles, just cherry-picked: Twentieth Century (which made Carole Lombard a star), Scarface (I mean, come on), Air Force, To Have and Have Not (which made Lauren Bacall a star), The Big Sleep, Red River. So let’s look at these: We have the birth of screwball comedy in Twentieth Century, we have one of the most influential gangster films of all time, we have a thrilling war film based on a true story, and then we have two Bogart-Bacall films, mixes of noir and erotic adventure. Then we have a great Western, starring THE Western old-guard star John Wayne, and the up-and-comer Montgomery Clift, in his film debut.

Hawks was an “auteur” in the most classic sense: he wrote, he produced, he directed, he did things his way. You can tell, to this day, if he directed something. He felt no pressure to be anyone other than himself, and he won most of his battles with various studio heads. Not all, but most. He introduced innovations. A whole new Oscar category was created for the flying sequences in Only Angels Have Wings. His scripts were longer than most scripts – so much talking! – but he introduced overlapping dialogue. Everyone trips over everybody else’s speech, interrupting constantly. This was a nightmare for the sound department and incredibly challenging for the actors but there’s a reason why his films, particularly the 1930s ones, have the reputation of being the FASTEST. If actors read the His Girl Friday script without cutting each off every line, where they finish their sentences before someone else speaks, the movie would have been three hours long. Instead, it’s 92 minutes. And you don’t miss a word.

There’s an interesting clip (audio only) where Hawks is asked about the overlapping dialogue.

Hawks’ 30s and 40s were awe-inspiring. He went on to have great success in the 50s too, which makes him slightly unusual, although in his cohort – George Cukor, John Ford, etc. – these guys kept going, with excellent films in every decade. Still. Hawks brought us Monkey Business (silly, but enjoyable), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (iconic and bizarre), and Rio Bravo (a classic).

He was an elder statesman for what felt like forever. He lived long enough to give lengthy interviews about his craft (most notably, with Peter Bogdanovich, who came back to him again and again, looking for more nuggets of wisdom). Hawks’ heirs are legion. He created so much. He established so mmuch. He set bars of accomplishment people still can’t reach. Bringing Up Baby. His Girl Friday. Only Angels Have Wings. Untouchable.

This is a personal riff on a line that shows up in three of Howard Hawks’ films. Written during the first wave of #MeToo – which should be obvious. I had a lot on my mind.

 
 
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