Hawks Marathon: Scarface (1932)

 I don't exactly know what to say about Scarface.  When you watch older movies that have attained classic status, you run the risk of something perhaps not aging as well as you'd hope.  To fully appreciate a movie, you need to understand the context, because just watching it by itself will make it not seem special.

Because... Scarface is very hard for me to take seriously if I'm being honest.  I had the same problem with The Public Enemy, and I suspect I'd have similar problems with Little Cesear as well.  The three movies were all made around the same time, and all helped create and influence the gangster drama to this day.

But I can't lie.  When I say I find it hard to take it seriously, I'm specifically referencing the beyond parody of how everybody talks.  Like I've seen people make fun of old time gangster voices, and I've seen parodies, but nothing can prepare you for the fact that those parodies... are not exaggerating in the slightest.

I don't know specifically why it's hard to take this seriously when other movies around this time also have goofy, parody ready voices.  I have two theories.  The first is that the goofy parody has tended to be a side character from the movies I've seen, and I can't take those characters any more seriously than I can here, but the characters you are actually supposed to care about tended to talk like a normal human being.

The second is that this is a gangster film and you're supposed to buy these guys as tough.  But the way they talk has so devolved into obvious parody by this point, that it is impossible to think of these guys as genuine threats.  It's like I'm watching a fucking Key and Peele sketch every time they open their mouth.

Which is a shame because, more than any other movie I've seen, I think this might be Hawks' best direction?  Or at least, it's the one where his direction is most evident.  Most of his movies are trying to hide his directing, which makes it tough to determine his influence beyond it just being a good movie.

Here, he makes the kind of choices that makes a director stand out, instead of hidden.  He has to show quite a lot of violence, and even though this was pre-Code, it needed to be obscured and hidden.  So in the opening scene, he has a very cool shot of a guy getting gunned down, seen purely through the shadows.  The camera then pans back to the body, which is now lying on the ground.

And he does that more than a few times and it's waaaaay more effective than actually showing the killing, especially then.  And there's very few actual people dying in front of us in this movie, and the few times they do, you're reminded why it's so much more effective to not show us the death.  Because actors did not know how to die on film in a way that didn't look goofy for... a long time.

I wish I could watch this movie and make my brain not notice the goofiness of the voices.  Especially since I can't really give you any sort of notes on the actors.  I've seen Paul Muni in two other things and this is my least favorite performance of his, but I also readily admit it's entirely due to the things everyone else in this movie was doing.  Everybody was guilty of the funny voices and weird mannerisms.

This is thankfully not one of those movies where I am befuddled over its reputation.  The damn 1930s gangster parody is the only problem I have with the movie, but it's a problem that's hard to ignore since any good gangster film makes you fear the gangsters.

It is weird that, despite this being pre-Code, Scarface seemed subject to Production Code era rules.  They have a ridiculous opening where they condemn gangsters and say we must stop them and what are the politicians doing.  I know they needed to change the ending - it's based on Al Capone - who most certainly did not die by the events of this movie.  And I'm sure they couldn't gotten away with what they got away with, but I just find it fascinating they still needed to change quite a bit.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Scarface.  I'm going to not give a grade, because it's impossible for me to grade this.  It's a better movie than whatever grade I would give, but also I can't give a better grade because that would imply I bought into this world.  So, hopefully one day I can get used to the parody.

Hawks Marathon: I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Watching I Was A Male War Bride, I realize how delicate the line is between a screwball comedy working and not working.  It's really no surprise they went out of style.  Not because there's no demand for a good screwball comedy, but because they are incredibly hard to pull off.

A screwball comedy has two things that are directly against how you normally make a movie.  The first is that you need to figure out how to force the plot into zany situations without making it obvious that's what you're doing behind-the-scenes.  Normally, in a movie, you write where the plot takes you, but with a screwball comedy, you're specifically forcing characters into wacko situations in a way that probably wouldn't naturally develop from your writing.

Secondly, you actually need to create believable characters who are probably going to behave irrationally in order to make the plot work.  Plot is derived from characters after all.  His Girl Friday is a perfect storm because the characters are why it's a screwball comedy - their world operates at a fast speed and everyone else is expected to keep up.  But the newspaper world is not how everyone operates.

Anyway, in case you didn't pick up on it, I think I Was A Male War Bride fails as a screwball comedy.  In the first half of the movie, a lot of the comedy is just so, so forced.  The train is still moving when the operator lifts up the boom barrier which defeats the whole purpose of the boom barrier.  Cary Grant climbs up a sign to read it which exactly zero people would ever do.  A child starts the motorcycle with a completely and inexplicably unaware Grant in the sidecar not realizing there's no one driving for an absurd amount of time.

But Gabe, this is a screwball comedy.  This is what happens in them.  If the gags are well set up, I accept these situations.  These gags are just incredibly forced, which only makes me realized how forced they are and I don't find them funny.

And for what it's worth, I wasn't disliking the movie up to this point either.  I was getting some strong It Happened One Night vibes from the first half of the movie.  And then, the writers realized "oh wait this movie relies on these two wanting to get married" and they forgot to, you know, set it up at all. 

The movie did two things successfully.  They showed them antagonistic towards each other and you believably thought they would get over that and eventually get together by the end.  But the writers skipped a step in the process.  Because the way it plays, Ann Sheridan very randomly decides she loves him.  Like there needed to be a step between them being playfully antagonistic towards each other and them loving each other.

I compared it to It Happened One Night for a reason.  The first half of this movie is pretty similar to the structure of that movie, only It Happened One Night still had the entire 2nd half of the movie for them to realize they love each other.  Like I said, it's like the writers realized "oh wait, we're not just copying that movie, we need to make him a war bride now."

It does not help that this is my least favorite Cary Grant performance so far.  It's Cary Grant, so the bar is high, but unfortunately for him, I'm comparing him to other Cary Grant performances, not typical leading man, so I was actually disappointed.  It seemed like he wasn't that interested in this movie personally?  He's got a very subdued performance.

I don't know I guess if you get right down to it, I didn't buy the chemistry between Grant and Sheridan.  I don't know if they were too successful at being snippy towards one each other or what, but I just think the moment when she falls in love with him wouldn't have seemed so random if I had bought into their chemistry.

And I know this is an American movie thing and that's it's based on something that happened to a French soldier and American woman, but Cary Grant being French and making no attempt at all at seeming like he's anything but an Englishman is weird.  I don't want Grant to try being French or anything, but why in the world did they not just make him British?  Bizarre.

I had higher hopes for this being a Hawks screwball and featuring Cary Grant, but unfortunately I Was a Male War Bride is not a movie I plan to revisit.

1.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: A Song is Born (1948)

I knew, going into this process, that A Song is Born was a musical remake of Ball of Fire, so I intended to spread them out as much as possible.  A Song is Born was also on Amazon Prime, a service which happens to remove movies without any notice at all, so after about a month, I felt enough time had passed to watch the musical remake.

Boy, they really weren't lying when they called this a remake.  This is exactly the same movie as Ball of Fire.  The difference is that Ball of Fire is obsessed with words, primarily early 1940s slang, while A Song is Born is obsessed with music, primarily jazz.  With the exception of when they play music, it's the same movie and I think almost the exact same dialogue.

Now, I can't say how I'd feel about this movie had I watched it first, but I didn't.  And so I really, really didn't like this movie.  And it's almost entirely due to the fact that everything about it is the same as Ball of Fire, but worse.  Everything is worse.

As I said in my Ball of Fire review, Gary Cooper didn't really do much for me in the few movies I'd seen him in prior to Ball of Fire, but nothing better exemplifies why he's good when you compare him to Danny Kaye in A Song is Born.  Now this is my first Danny Kaye movie and as I understand it, he's a lot different here than this in his other movies.  Which is good because it kind of feels like he's just trying to copy Cooper here, but poorly.

Then there's Virginia Mayo.  She really never had a chance.  Maybe she's good in other things.  But my reference point here is Barbara Stanwyck, and in the words of Howard Hawks, Virginia Mayo is no Barbara Stanwyck.  Few are, but never has that point been more clear than comparing Ball of Fire and A Song is Born.

Hell, I even like Dana Andrews as the gangster more in Ball of Fire than Steve Cochran here.  I'm telling you, every thing about this movie is worse than Ball of Fire.  And like I said, maybe if I hadn't watched that movie first, it'd be different.  Ball of Fire had a spark, the movie kept your attention, there was a rhythm to everything that happened.  This movie is just flat.

Well, except for one thing: the music.  I'd recommend A Song is Born just for the historical document, but I'd also tell you to skip everything but the music.  Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnett, Mel Powell - they're all in this movie and playing music and it's great.  It's the only good thing about the movie, but it's so good that it basically makes the movie worth watching by itself.

Speaking of, the plot makes much less sense here than in Ball of Fire too.  A grammarian working on an encyclopedia cut off from the outside world for years?  Makes sense that he isn't up to date on new slang.  A musical encyclopedia that is completely unaware of jazz makes... a lot less sense.  Surely these extremely smart professors know that music is constantly changing and they need to stay up to date.  I don't know, it seems insane to me that these experts on music just have never heard of jazz in 1948.

Sharing my distaste for this movie is... the director himself, Howard Hawks.  Who admitted that he only directed it because it came with a $250,000 paycheck, which is the equivalent of $2.7 million today.  He called Kaye a basket case because he had separated from his wife.  And he didn't have nice things to say about Mayo either, as expressed above.  He said it was a horrible experience.

How much can music save a film?  That's the question I'm debating when giving my grade, but let it be known that whatever my grade, the music is the only redeeming quality in this movie.  Just watch Ball of Fire instead.

2/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: El Dorado (1967)

Howard Hawks is known for his wide variety of genres he tackles, from screwball comedy to war to Westerns.  Having gone through a fair amount of his movies at this point, I will say that his versatility is probably a bit overstated.  It's perhaps the effect of watching his movies in a marathon setting - even if that setting is over a few months and not back-to-back - but his early to middle career seems defined by the screwball comedy.  And he tended to fall back on love triangles frequently.

Towards the end of his career, he gravitated towards one genre, Westerns.  I don't know if that was the only genre that interested him, or the only genre that he was actually allowed to make, but of his last six movies, three were Westerns and since John Wayne stars in one of the non-Westerns, I'm wondering if that will have the feel of a Western as well.

In any case, from what I understand, he made effectively the same Western three times, with one of those movies being El Dorado.  I am planning to watch all three by the end of the marathon, but for now, El Dorado is my first of the three.

And I'm kind of glad it's my first.  El Dorado and Rio Lobo are considered pale imitators of the bonafide classic Western, Rio Bravo (which was the first made of the three), and I really don't think I would have enjoyed El Dorado as much if I had just seen Rio Bravo recently.  Who knows?

I have a few complaints.  There is no suspension of disbelief I am capable of in believing that a woman who looks like Charlene Holt would be interested in a man who looks like old ass John Wayne.  Not to mention Wayne knew her as a kid and as I understand it, was something like a father figure, and yeah no.

Secondly, I don't actually think James Caan is very good in this movie.  I like James Caan.  And I'm mostly familiar with him as an older guy, where I think he just naturally has more presence.  Here, I don't know, he seems like a much worse actor than the James Caan I've watched.  (I haven't seen Godfather in a long enough time that I can't even remember how I felt about his performance, and that's the only young Caan I've seen I think)

Also, another John Wayne related complaint, but Wayne is just too old for this role.  Or out of shape.  Robert Mitchum specifically plays the out of shape, past his prime alcoholic that is very easy to buy, but Wayne still being as quick as ever?  Suspension of disbelief required.

I lead off with my complaints, because if you can get past those elements - and really if you're watching an older John Wayne movie, you probably understand what you're getting into and can look past those elements, then this is a good, solid Western.  You get exactly what you expect in this movie.

One thing that stands out is how great Christopher George is as the villain.  He mostly sits down, commenting on the action, bemused at the whole situation, and his performance alone makes you believe in his reputation.  Because... we don't really ever see it.  He has other guys do his bidding.  And it doesn't matter that we don't see it, because George has a great, above-it-all element.  It's so great that I'm genuinely disappointed he doesn't really seem to be in much else that I would watch.

Mitchum is of course great.  It's the type of great that can get overlooked because he's able to so embody his character, that it doesn't even look like he's trying.  And John Wayne, well, he's John Wayne.  He's playing John Wayne.  This is not one of those performances where Wayne is really acting.  And I'm starting to love Arthur Honnicut, who seems to be doing his best Walter Brennan impression here.

All in all, I enjoyed El Dorado despite my complaints.  It's a movie that doesn't feel like it should work as well as it does, but for some reason, it's able to blow past the things you can't accept and just makes you enjoy a good Western.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: A Girl in Every Port (1928)

 Howard Hawks made movies for a very, very long time.  Because he was born in 1896, this means his career started in silent film.  I intended to watch at least one silent film in this marathon of his, and it just so happens that A Girl in Every Port was the only available online.  It was actually on Youtube and you can watch it now if you want.

Hawks made seven silent films, one of which ended up technically counting as a talkie even though it was filmed as a silent film and only had 15 minutes of dialogue added after the fact.  I don't believe any of his silent films have all that great of a reputation, which makes sense for a director whose most famous genre, screwball, is heavily reliant on dialogue.

But if one were to watch one silent film of his, it seems like A Girl at Every Port was the one to pick, the one that most resembles his later works.  Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy said that film scholars considered this to be his most important silent film work.  How lucky for me!  Or perhaps, the reason it was ever on Youtube and the reason others weren't.

Also, this is evidently the movie that put Louise Brooks on the map.  Or more accurately, it got the attention of G.W. Pabst, who directed two movies starring Brooks that made her an international star.  Brooks is an interesting figure to say the least.  She popularized the bob hairstyle and seemed like she would have fit in very well with the whole free love movement, although she was about four decades too early.

A Girl in Every Port kind of has a cartoon-like quality to it.  A sailor travels around the world and in every part of the world, he finds a girl, but each girl he finds has a mark of a different sailor.  Which I'm not entirely sure why this bothered him to be honest.  It's not like he was planning to marry any of them.

Anyway, eventually he runs into this guy, the one who seems to mark every girl - what a weird concept.  Like I said, cartoon logic.  And they get in a fight, but get interrupted by the cops, and both of them decide to fight the cops.  Spike, played by Victor McLaglen, pays for his own bail and his opponent, because he wants to return to the fight, but they end up working out their differences and become best friends.

Later on in the movie, Spike comes across Louise Brooks, who he falls in love with.  She's just stringing him along and has also been with Spike's best bud, Salami.  She's remarkably candid with Salami about this, essentially sharing that she plans to take this dude's money and bail.  Misunderstandings ensue, and male friendship is more important than any woman.

It's okay.  It was worth watching for me personally just to see Brooks and McLaglen, who was an early silent film star who successfully made the transition to sound, winning a Best Actor award in 1935.  But I don't know if most people would watch a movie just for that?

Like I said, the movie is best understood as a cartoon.  These two guys are able to take down like 10 cops by themselves and might as well be doing the cartoon arm punching 5 guys in one motion thing.  The tattoo thing on every girl is... just weird and Spike not willing to, it's implied, sleep with anyone with that tattoo is very weird.  Like why the fuck do you care, you really think all these women are just waiting for you and doing nothing else in the meantime?  Like I sort of get it in the sense that I know this is how men used to (and maybe still do) think, but I also don't get it because I don't know why this is a thing that would bother them if they don't actually plan to commit.

Anyway, Hawks didn't write most of his movies, or at least he didn't write the screenplays to most of his movies.  I know he could have probably have gotten a written by credit on some of his movies.  But he does write and direct this.  He seems to have little interest in title cards - they are used as infrequently as possible, with back-and-forth dialogue going on with no indication what they are saying except to use context clues to figure out.  Which is not particularly hard, I just found it interesting.

But the important element of Hawks writing this is that it considered to have the early makings of Hawks tropes.  Two men fighting over a woman.  Male friendship.  It doesn't really have one of the important elements, the Hawksian woman, because Brooks isn't really that.

I don't think Hawks liked his silent movies at all, because I don't think he wanted them to be silent.  In his later years, there was a Hawks retrospective in the 70s and one of his silent movies, Trent's Last Case, was on the list, and Hawks wanted it off the list and destroyed.  I am not kidding.  Now he doesn't like that for a specific reason - he thought it was going to be a sound movie but they didn't have the rights to make it a sound movie - so he found the whole movie a chore.  But I'm not sure he felt any more positive about his other silent movies either.  It's not like any of them are considered classics now.

And really, when you consider the things Hawks is famous for in his movies, it makes sense.  Hawks was successful quickly in the sound era.  His second sound film won an Oscar for best writing and three years after that, he made his first recognized classic, Scarface. (which I have yet to see, but hope to include on this marathon).  For now, he was boxed in within the limitations of what film could do.

2/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: His Girl Friday (1940)

 Back in my review for Twentieth Century, which is credited as the birth of the screwball comedy and which I didn't like, I mentioned that I wasn't sure I liked screwball comedies, and part of that belief, though I didn't express it there, was I remember being disappointed by His Girl Friday, which is maybe the most definitive screwball comedy there is.

I hadn't watched the movie in some amount of years.  I know I watched it while I was still at school, which means it was - dear god - at least six years ago.  So when I clicked play on His Girl Friday, I was both worried and curious.  I was eager to see it again because I wanted an answer to this vague feeling of disappointment I remember and worried because I truly did want to like a movie almost nobody dislikes.

I have no fucking idea what younger me was disappointed by.  I have been completely swayed in the opposite direction upon a rewatch.  His Girl Friday is an amazing movie - one of the best movies of all time - and I respect myself less for ever feeling that way.

In my defense, His Girl Friday was my first screwball comedy.  I truly didn't know what I was getting into when I watched it.  I'm much better prepared now.  Also, it is definitely funny, but any older comedy is not necessarily going to get the laughs you'd expect from its reputation.  I think I was really just expecting the movie to be a nonstop laugh riot without fully realizing that a movie made in 1940 isn't ever going to do that to a young 20 something guy.

I don't know if I'm alone in that opinion.  Even the truly best comedies from before a certain time period tend to only get a mild chuckle every now and then from me.  Which is why the comedies that stand the test of time have more going for it than just humor.

And boy does His Girl Friday have more going for it than humor.  The dialogue is insane.  Just witty remark after witty remark after witty remark with no breaks to breathe.  It's nonstop.  There is no soundtrack.  The dialogue is the soundtrack.  There's not even room to have a soundtrack because every space available is filled with words.

Even though I said my disappointment with His Girl Friday - at least I theorize this is why - is partially expecting a laugh riot, it is truly funny.  Cary Grant got me to laugh with his reaction shots multiple times in this movie.  Yes, with as good of dialogue as His Girl Friday has, Grant just reacting is what made me laugh most.

Also funny: Billy Gilbert as Pettibone, who is not in that much of the movie, but seems to have pitch perfect comedic timing in his two scenes, and he nearly steals the movie.  But of course, he doesn't, because Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell exist and nobody can steal the movie from them two.

Hawks wanted to break a record with this movie by having the most words per minute and he actually timed it to make sure it would.  And it shows.  You have to give this movie your absolute full attention.  You can't even fold laundry to this movie.  You will miss something.  And I'm sure you'll pick up something new each time you watch it.  It's impossible not to miss things, the movie moves so fast.

This is probably the movie where Hawks' directorial talent most shines through I think.  Hawks wanted his hand to be invisible when directing and for the most part, he accomplishes that.  Just from a purely technical standpoint, it feels like anybody could have directed his movies.  I know that's not true.  But he directs movies very straightforwardly.

But here, I noticed the extreme difficulty it would have taken to film these scenes, because the camera always has to be on someone talking and people are talking so fast, it's genuinely impressive we can follow both the action and what people are saying.  This is from a time when they had to have multiple microphones just to pick up every sound they could.  It really should have been nominated for something sound-related.  Or anything at all, but it wasn't nominated for anything.

And as it turns out, I have actually written about this movie six years ago.  On this site.  I will not post it because I do not stand by it, but my main contention was that I didn't find it funny.  My instincts were correct.  So I definitely found it funnier on rewatch.  Back then, I gave the movie 3 stars.  I will be revising that grade for my rewatch.

4/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: The Big Sky (1952)

The Big Sky is a Howard Hawks movie undistinguished enough to fly under the radar and be posted on Dailymotion.  It is not really a movie I'd have ever come across and even think to watch if not for the Howard Hawks marathon.

Upon further reflection, The Big Sky does have some accolades though.  Jonathan Rosenbaum, an influential film critic, listed it as one of the 100 greatest movies not including in the American Film Institute's Top 100 movies. 

It also has two Oscar nominations, one for the best black-and-white cinematography and one for best supporting actor.  This is notable only in the sense that Hawks' movies are notoriously shut out of the Academy Awards.  Not necessarily for the acting nomination, but at the least the cinematography would suggest something.

In the end though, The Big Sky is fairly unmemorable.  This is a movie that I will forget everything about in a year.  I know this because I watched this last week and had to read the Wikipedia summary to remember this movie.

It's fine.  It is not a movie you regret watching, but as I said, it's not particularly memorable.  This is a movie with a relatively simple plot and because of that, the movie feels longer than its two hour runtime.  They seek to trade with Indians who normally refuse to trade with outsiders, but they bring along the daughter of a chief who had escaped an enemy tribe as an "in."

That's the plot.  They have struggles along the way.  They're trying to reach the Blackfoot Indians before the Missouri Fur Company does, which was a real company founded by, among others, Lewis Clark of Lewis and Clark, although it was dissolved before the events of this movie.

Because this is a movie, various events end up putting the daughter, whose name is Teal Eyes, and the two main characters, played by Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin, closer together.  Love triangle is a bit strong, but both end up vying for her affection.  This is a weakness because, well, she doesn't speak English. 

One-time actress Elizabeth Threatt, who apparently had affairs with both Hawks and Douglas before this movie, was really the daughter of a Native American.  So score one for casting on this one because that was extremely rare for 1952 for a leading role.  Now, Threatt really is beautiful, but the whole "she can't speak English part" - it's kind of where I stop believing in any future romance between these characters.  They literally can't communicate with each other and evidently fall in love.

Not to mention, I'm supposed to believe that she gets over the fact that Martin's character carries a fucking Native American scalp around with him.  Or just his hair.  Like I just don't think this is a thing she would get over, even though he didn't personally kill this Indian.  Anyway, she works towards stealing this from him and even trying to kill him, and then it's like a light switch flips, and she's in love.

There is one very good part about this movie and it's the Oscar nominated actor.  Arthur Hunnicutt is incredible in this movie.  He has such an authoritative voice.  Think Sam Elliot.  And he is completely convincing in this movie.  Well deserved nomination.  He appears in a future Hawks Western and I'll hope he'll be as good in that movie as he is here.

The Big Sky is fine.  It features a not all that convincing love story, but simple plot or no, the story is interesting and features a great supporting performance.  I'm just sure I'll end up forgetting all about this movie.

2.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: To Have and Have Not (1944)

To Have and Have Not occupies a weird space for me.  My brain formed an expectation of what the movie was based off... now that I think about it, very little.  Pretty much the only thing I knew about this movie was that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had a steamy romance while it was filming mirroring the romance in the movie.

And in a way, that is what happens.  Bogart's character meets Bacall's characters and they have a battle of wits of sorts, mostly because that was pretty much the only way to build sexual tension in the 1940s without violating the Production Code.

Except that the movie is barely about the romance or budding romance as it were.  A lot of it is about the development of Harry Morgan from an apolitical guy uninterested in fighting to a man willing to fight for the resistance.  Hawks claims that he wasn't really interested in being political and the focus of the movie was the relationship.

Whatever his intentions, that doesn't really come across.  I mean sure the relationship is not an unimportant part of the movie or anything, but it really seems like the majority of the plot is about Bogart's progression as a character.  To me anyway. 

I find the development of To Have and Have Not pretty fascinating.  It was made in the middle of World War II about a period of time before the Americans joined the war based on a book that had nothing to do with World War II.  

First off, it is astounding how many movies set or about World War II were made while World War II was happening.  Hollywood moved much, much quicker back in the day.  Americans weren't involved in World War II for that long, less than four years.  

To Have and Have Not was based on a book by Ernest Hemingway.  Except that it was purposefully made by Hawks because he told Hemingway that he could make a good movie out of Hemingway's worst book, which he believed was To Have and Have Not.  The original story was set in Cuba, but featured an unfavorable portrayal of the Cuban government which violated the Good Neighbor policy.

William Faulkner was hired to rewrite the initial screenplay and changed the setting to France, and during World War II.  So to say the movie deviates from the novel would be an understatement.  So Hemingway wrote the novel, Jules Furthman wrote the original draft, and Faulkner wrote the finished draft, making this possibly the greatest collection of writers to contribute to a movie ever.

Hawks wanted to model the success of Casablanca by basically aping it.  The movie got mixed reviews with the negative ones saying it was a rip-off of Casablanca.  Which was essentially Hawks' intention.  I haven't seen Casablanca in a long, long time, so I can't really comment on this.  Parts of it certainly reminded me of Casablanca, but it didn't feel like I was watching the same movie thankfully.  But again, I don't have a great memory of Casablanca (which I did love when I did watch it)

The acting is all great.  That's to be expected of course.  I'm not entirely sure how old Bacall was supposed to be in this movie, but she definitely plays older.  She was 19 at the time of filming which blows my mind.  It's no surprise Bogart is good since he was immediately cast.  Hell, his character was probably written with him in mind.  And Walter Brennan shows up yet again in a Hawks production and there's a reason he kept getting cast by Hawks.

To Have and Have Not is one of those films that amazes me in how it was ever good.  Only 36 pages of the script were written when filming began, so Faulkner had to re-write nearly the entire movie on the fly.  Hawks would change some of the dialogue the day of filming.  I don't know it just always shocks me when movies are made with the plan being "it'll get done, don't worry about it right now."

Maybe one day I'll do a Casablanca/To Have and Have Not watch back-to-back to see just how similar the movies feel, but for now I'll just appreciate To Have and Have Not as its own movie.  I think I just really like the resistance sideplot/mainplot with the romance being the "real" story.  I mean they certainly make enough of the same movies, it's not like the Casablanca plot is repeated ad nauseam and it is a genuinely great setting for a movie. 

3.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Ball of Fire (1941)

The old Hollywood system operated under one assumption: you were there to see Cary Grant or Bette Davis or whoever the lead actor was.  They gave the most popular actors the best projects.  It doesn't really work that way anymore, because people don't really see movies for the actors.  Not to say it never happens, but it doesn't drive public interest.  Movie stars don't really exist in the way movie stars use to exist.

I say all that because for the first time, I understand that phenomenon.  Oh sure, I may think I'm more likely to like a movie because somebody's in it, but they aren't really the driving factor.  I'm more of a "is the movie good?  Okay, I'll see it." guy.  But Ball of Fire crystallized something: I want to watch anything Barbara Stanwyck is in.

I am not kidding you.  This is one of the absolute greatest things about how the old Hollywood system worked.  Stanwyck was a star forever and she always got the best projects so there are a ton of movies that I'm naturally going to watch with her in it anyway.  But I want to watch every movie.

By pure coincidence, I ended up watching three Stanwyck movies in the span of about a month.  I watched Baby Face, Remember the Night, and Ball of Fire.  She is fan-fucking-tastic in every one of those movies.   I loved the latter two movies in fact.  (Baby Face is solid, but more notable for what it got away with pre-Hollywood code)

Opposite her in Ball of Fire is Gary Cooper.  I haven't been much of a fan of Cooper in the movies I've seen so far, but he's well deployed here.  Whatever hadn't clicked for me before clicks in this movie.  He plays a good and believable straight-laced character.  Shockingly, I also didn't find it hard to believe Cooper was some nerdy bookworm either.

Here's the premise.  A collection of experts in their field all live together in the service of writing a new and up to date encyclopedia.  All of them are men and all of them are bachelors, purposefully away from any distractions such as women.  With the exception of Cooper, they are old men.

The old men are played by veteran character actors of the day.  Look at each of their IMDB pages, and every one of them has well over 100 credits with careers dating back to silent film.  That experience is certainly felt in the performances which are all good and refined despite not a whole lot of characterization for most of them.

Cooper is a grammarian of the group.  But when he talks with a garbage man, he finds he doesn't understand the slang.  Which means his part of the encyclopedia would be hopelessly out of date.  So he goes out in the town and recruits people to help teach him new slang, one of the recruits being a nightclub performer on the run from the cops.  That nightclub performer is Barbara Stanwyck.

So what you have here is a very classic screwball comedy setup.  Stanwyck is supposed to be married to a gangster so she can't testify against him, but he's trying to stay hidden.  So she needs to stay hidden until they meet.  When Cooper comes along, she jumps at the chance to hide out at the place all the old men are living until she can meet the gangster.

Which proves not particularly difficult since all the old men are excited, understandably, about having Barbara freaking Stanwyck around.  Cooper is very, VERY old school though and is the only one against it, but he's also the only younger guy so of course he falls in love with her and she with him.

But a lot of fun stuff happens in between all that.  Ball of Fire is just delightfully fun to watch.  I had a grin on my face for most of the movie.  A screwball comedy done well is one of the most enjoyable film experiences you can have.  It's just incredibly hard to do.

4/4 stars 

Hawks Marathon: Red River (1948)

Howards Hawks is mostly known for making a wide variety of genres, but if you had to boil it down more specifically, he's know for the screwball comedy first and the Western second.  In the first half of his career, he made many screwball comedies, and he even incorporated the screwball element in his other works.

Near as I can tell, he had not made a true Western in his first 20 years as a filmmaker, and then made five in his last 24 years as a filmmaker.  And I'm guessing a large reason why is because of John Wayne, who was the lead actor in all of his Westerns, with one exception, and starred in five movies directed by Hawks.

Red River is a bit long, and it takes a while until the real meat of the movie happens.  The movie is about the tension between John Wayne's character, Thomas Dunson, and his adopted son and protegé, Matt Garth.  The tension arises while on a long voyage to sell cattle. Dunson grows increasingly hostile and paranoid, leading to some less than stellar leadership decisions.  Garth grows dissatisfied with the direction Dunson is going and eventually has to take matters into his own hands.

Wayne, somewhat surprisingly I suppose, plays the villain.  Roger Ebert says he plays both hero and villain, but I'll be honest.  When he comes to Texas and immediately claims land that is not his own as his own, and then kills at least eight people over the years to defend it, wasn't really getting much of a good guy vibe.  Clearly, morality works different in Western movies, but even then, from a modern perspective, he is at best, an anti-hero in the beginning.

Which actually adds to the movie, doesn't diminish it.  The character he is throughout the movie and at the end isn't at odds with who is at the start.  He is determined, and that determination could lead to blindness as to the possibility he may be wrong.  He frequently makes choices that make it harder on the group he leads and his punitive measures only turn people further against him as a leader.

Opposed to him is Garth, played by Montgomery Clift.  Clift, who was 26 at the time this was filmed, was making his debut in Red River.  He was not nominated for an Oscar for Red River, but his first nomination came in 1949, and he was nominated three more times by 1962 before he committed suicide in 1966.

This is my second Clift movie, and while he's good here, neither movie gave me an indication this guy was some highly acclaimed actor.  I don't see a large difference in his performance from any other leading guy at the time.  Then again, he never actually won an Oscar so who knows.

There are three main weaknesses to the movie.  I do think the pacing of the movie is a little off.  I think Garth's inevitable split from Dunson should happen earlier in the film.  There's a go nowhere subplot involving Cherry Valance (played by John Ireland) and Garth that never leads anywhere.  

Somewhat related to the pacing, Tess Millay, played by Joanne Dru, shows up very late in the movie and then ends up having an outsized role in the plot.  Dru plays her like she's in a different movie than everyone else.  She's making quips and being unafraid of shots being fired at her - she actually gets hit - and the movie momentarily turns into a wacky romantic comedy.  The tone is all off when she pops in.  

Lastly, the ending.  The ending feels off because the ending is different in the source material.  Originally Valance was supposed to shoot and kill Dunson, which would have been a much better ending.  Instead, Valance dies and his character ends up seeming pointless, and they fight, only for the late arriving Millay be the one who convinces them to stop.

Red River fits firmly in the category of good movies with flaws.  Sometimes obvious weaknesses are a sign that a movie is bad, but other times, they tend to stand out specifically because it's contrasted against the rest of the movie.  They made so many right decisions that the wrong ones can be noticeable.

I've seen a few Wayne movies and Wayne appears to be at his best when his characters are more morally questionable.  His acting style doesn't really deviate all that much, and just plain works better when he's not playing a straightforward hero, because it's somewhat hard to buy.  Maybe I'm letting my opinion of Wayne influence my opinion here, but he's just harder to accept.

Old reliable and Hawks favorite Walter Brennan shows up in this movie.  Interestingly, an actual Native American named Chief Yowlachie plays a Native American in this movie and purely as comic relief.  And not at his expense.  So I thought that was cool for 1948.

I've said about all I have to say about Red River.  Like I said above, I think it's a good movie with flaws.  And I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I liked it better the second time, once it was clearer where the movie was headed.  Can't see myself turning around on Joanne Dru though to be honest.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Air Force (1943)

Most Howard Hawks movies seem watchable.  IMDB is not a tremendously reliable source for quality, but click on any one of the movies he directed, and you're bound to find something at a 6.0 or above, typically 7.0 or above.  So when I went through his list of movies, I also checked to see if I could watch them anywhere.  If I could watch it anywhere, I would watch it.

I mention that, because Air Force was available on Dailymotion.  Had I been more discerning on what to watch, I probably would have skipped Air Force.  Not because it has a poor grade on IMDB - 7.0 - but because of what it is.

Air Force is a propaganda film.  There's no two ways around that.  Filmed in 1943, and planned shortly after Pearl Harbor, Air Force is pretty explicitly a war propaganda film.  One only needs to watch the first and last minutes to figure that out.  The beginning is a quote from Abraham Lincoln and the end, well I'll just write it out:

"This story has a conclusion but not an end --- for it's real end will be the victory for which Americans -- on land, on sea, and in the air -- have fought, are fighting now and will continue to fight until peace has won.  Grateful acknowledgement is given to the United States Army Air Force, without whose assistance this record could not have been filmed."

The fact that this is a war propaganda film is tolerable for two reasons.  First, it is a war propaganda film during World War II.  Literally any other war in the 20th century would have put this in a context to make it unbearable.  The second is that the action scenes are actually pretty decent, and downright spectacular when you take into account it was made in 1943.

There is however the matter that this was made after Pearl Harbor, or at least because of it, and is set around the events of Pearl Harbor.  Which means the enemy of the people in this movie are the Japanese, not the Nazis.  Which is REALLY unfortunate when they make a pit stop in Hawaii and... Japanese Americans attack them.  

Well I suppose you can remove the American part because it's not said they are American, but it fed on a very real fear at the time that Japanese Americans would do such a thing - it never happened.  Which happens to move this movie from any typical war propaganda to anti-Japanese propaganda.  Look up what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II if you wonder why this is a problem.

It's a small part of the movie, but it kind of stains the whole thing.  In fact, the cinematographer of the picture, James Wong Howe, was Chinese and typically wore "I am Chinese" around so people wouldn't think he was Japanese during World War II.  Howe was an innovative, influential cinematographer who worked from the 1920s to the end of his life in the 1970s.  He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning two of them.  He was nominated for his work on Air Force, and for another movie in 1943.

The plot of Air Force was based on a real thing that happened.  B-17s left California and while they were en route, Pearl Harbor happened.  That's where real life ends though.  The rest of the plot is completely fictional.

One clue about this being a propaganda film is that one of the characters is about to go home because his service is almost over.  He wants to go home.  He's not very patriotic and is just done with the whole "being a soldier thing."  By the end, he wants to re-enlist and is as rah-rah as any soldier.

As with most war movies, this features a cast of unknowns.  Couldn't tell you if they were unknown at the time, but I've never seen any of their movies.  John Garfield was nominated for an Oscar four years prior, so he was at least a little known.  And as with most war movies, the acting isn't really the selling point.  It can be, but everyone is functional, not exercising difficult acting chops.

For what it is, Air Force is a good film.  It's got good action, good special effects, and has kind of a unique take on a war movie.  But some of the patriotic stuff can be a bit much.  Made in the smack dab middle of World War II with a Hollywood Production Code that would accept nothing less than full-throated patriotism, Air Force is a product of it's time, for better or worse.

2.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Come and Get It (1936)

The great thing about the Orson Welles marathon is, interesting movie or not, every single movie had an interesting backstory.  At least every single movie he directed had an interesting backstory.  It meant that I had material to write about regardless of how I felt about the film.

With Howard Hawks, I suspect this will not be the case, but with Come and Get It, we have an exception.  On IMDB, Come and Get It is credited to not only Howard Hawks, but also William Wyler and Richard Rosson.  Wyler was a great director in his own right, but they did not team up to make this movie.  Rosson was Hawks' co-director or second director for a few movies, in this case the logging sequences.

Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to Edna Farber's book, which spanned 50 years and was about "the wholesale rape of America by the robber barons of the day" (Her words).  Goldwyn was attracted to the Barbary Coast-like qualities of the book, so he hired the director of that movie.

But soon after filming, Goldwyn had two major surgeries and was away from filming for a lengthy period of time.  He was not able to follow the progress of the movie.  Hawks, being apparently not interested in the story or theme that Farber wanted, decided to take advantage of this lack of oversight.  He changed the tone of the story, he changed a supporting role that was supposed to be a strongman into the rail thin Walter Brennan, and he arranged a shooting schedule that required a budget over what Goldwyn would have approved.

He was able to film quite a bit of the movie before Goldwyn came back.  Goldwyn was furious.  Hawks I think gambled that Goldwyn would let him finish the movie, because too much of it had been filmed already.  But he lost that gamble and was fired.  Goldwyn threatened Wyler with suspension if he didn't complete the film, and Wyler very reluctantly agreed.  Wyler was sorry about it for the rest of his life and didn't consider Come and Get It to be part of his filmography.

The absolutely fascinating thing about this is that I don't think Hawks was right on this one.  I approve of him saying fuck the studio and doing his own thing, but I'm struggling to think his version was better.  Hawks wanted to do a love triangle, which seems like the least interesting angle to take on this story.

Here's what the story is about.  Back in the 1880s, a man named Barney Glasgow was a lumberjack who had ambitions to be head of the logging industry.  He fell in love with a saloon singer, but chose instead to marry the daughter of his wealthy boss so that he could take over the business.  The saloon singer married his best friend instead.  Cut to 23 years later.

Glasgow is in a loveless marriage when he becomes convinced to visit his old friend, who he rarely saw once that saloon singer died.  But they had a kid and wouldn't you know it, she looks exactly like her mother.  Glasgow proceeds to have an extremely creepy infatuation with her.

In the meantime, Glasgow complains about having to pay taxes and how he should be able to cut down any tree he wants.  Oh and by the way, he earns his fortune by cutting down trees on land he does not own.  Important information.  He also doesn't plant new trees in its place.  His son, who is much more progressive, cares more about the environment and thinks it's better both business-wise and for the environment to re-plant seeds and he's much less hostile to governmental taxes.

And the son ends up falling in love with the daughter.  So in Hawks version, apparently, the son is barely in the movie.  Most of the movie comprises Swan, the rail thin Brennan, and Glasgow fighting for the affections of the saloon singer.  I legitimately do not understand how that sounds more interesting than the plot of the book personally.

So Wyler came in and filmed what ended up being the last third of the film and it was presumably edited differently than what Hawks intended, because there's not really much of a love triangle between Swan and Glasgow.  Glasgow "wins," but then abandons her for his future wife and then Swan swoops in.

The Glasgow character was modeled after Hawks' grandfather, and I don't know if that had anything to do with why he virtually ignored the environmental aspect (supposedly anyway), but just something worth pointing out.  His increased budget is felt though.  Lots of scenes of real trees being cut down and it's very impressive.  There's a few minutes too many of these establishing scenes in my opinion - like they spent the money so they'll get their money's worth - but it's clear they filmed at an actual logging company.

The funniest part of this movie is a 31-year-old Joel McCrea being under 23.  His age is not stated, but he's not yet born when we cut to 23 years later.  And some 30-year-olds can pull off 23, but McCrea looks 40.  People aged faster back then, so when I say he looks 40, I mean he looks 40 in 2021.  But I don't think he even looked 22 or whatever in 1936.

The performances carry this movie.  Edward Arnold, who I've never even heard of before this movie, is great.  Walter Brennan won the very first Academy Award for a supporting actor for his part as Swan.  Both actors seem way, way too old to play their younger selves which is at least slightly distracting.  

The completely unknown at the time Frances Farmer gets the dual roles of mother and daughter and I have to give her credit because she is able to make them distinct characters while also making it seem like they're related.  The mother has a bit more of a husky voice and a carefree attitude while the daughter is more sweet and childlike.  Hawks said she was no question the best actress he ever worked with.  Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia just six years later and her career never really took off.

 Whoever is ultimately responsible for the movie, I enjoyed it.  It doesn't feel like two directors directed it, so good job on the editor I suppose.  It was well-acted and it has a more interesting story than most movies do.  I don't think it ever vaulted into greatness, but it's a good movie.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Twentieth Century

 In 1934, two comedies came out that are widely credited with being the prototype for the soon-to-be popular genre of screwball comedy.  I'd have to rewatch It Happened One Night, but that didn't feel like a screwball comedy at all.  It was the prototype for every romantic comedy that ever existed, but the screwball part was lost on me.

Twentieth Century on the other hand, certainly is a screwball comedy.  It doesn't feel like one until the second half of the film, but it sort of makes sense that one of the first - if not the first - would ease the audience into a new style of comedy.

It's probably best to put this here, but I don't actually know if I like screwball comedies.  Twentieth Century appears to be my fifth of the genre, if you consider Frank Capra's one (which I wouldn't, but if it counts, it counts).  I've only really liked one of them, Bringing Up Baby.  Well correction: I actually really like It Happened One Night, but if that's screwball, every romantic comedy in existence is screwball.

And unfortunately, I didn't like Twentieth Century very much, which does not leave me with much hope.  Because you have to search for people who don't like this movie.  Because when I was about to list what I didn't particularly like about Twentieth Century, it seems like it's endemic to the very genre itself.

Namely, the overacting.  In my review of Gaslight, I explained that one of the biggest hurdles to older movies is in fact the acting.  It took movies a long, long time to figure out they did not need to act as if they were in a theatrical production.  I should have saved that rant for this post, because that movie actually has good acting with a few theatrical parts that lost me, while this movie is ALL theatrics.

Let me put it this way.  Even for 1934, the acting was considered over the top.  Which means it's REALLY over the top in 2021.  The acting is not this over the top in the other screwball comedies I've watched, but it is certainly not tethered to the same reality as any modern movie, so that's why I'm worried I may just not like the genre.

Twentieth Century is about a theater producer who finds a virtual unknown whom he sees the potential in and helps her rise to stardom.  She ends up leaving him to become a star in Hollywood, which she does.  While her fortunes rise, his fall with her departure.  He and her find themselves on the same train, and he tries to corner her and sign her again.  I'm really simplifying the movie's plot here, but that's the movie.

Anyway, I write out that plot, because I think the movie's intentions are to make both characters insufferable where you come to the conclusion that they belong together.  They are both insufferable, but I'm not necessarily sure I agree with that conclusion!

It's here where I must be THAT guy and judge a movie in 1934 for 2021 standards, because boy I just can't get on the level that Carole Lombard's character is as bad as the theater producer.  He's not meant to be a good guy, even in 1934, but I can't help but feel his actions weren't seen as quite as bad as they'd come across nowadays.

Cause, he uses his power to control and seduce this actress.  He ends up running three popular plays with her, and has an iron grip on her.  He won't let her do anything.  And he's crazy manipulative, doing anything and everything to keep her with him, including threatening suicide.  Her worst offense?  Being a parody of a diva actress.

I don't want to give the impression that this movie thinks Oscar Jaffe, as played by John Barrymore, is a good guy.  It does not think he's a good guy.  But I honestly think we are supposed to root for Lombard to go back to him to act in another play, and she should stay very fucking far away from this guy.

The performances are very hammy.  They were meant to be hammy in 1934.  Which again I stress that a lot of performances were hammy prior to Marlon Brando, which means they are REALLY hammy by today's standards.  John Barrymore is at least entertaining, but Carole Lombard, who I liked very much in To Be or Not to Be, is insufferable in this movie.  Lots of hysterical fake crying.  Lots and lots of overdramatic yelling.  I get it, that's the point.  

Anyway, I fully expected to like this and sadly, I didn't really.  Not all old classics are gonna age well.

2/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Barbary Coast (1935)

To be honest, as I'm writing this, I don't actually know the order I'll be posting these.  I mention that because Barbary Coast is my third Hawks movie in my Howard Hawks marathon, following two movies that will end up having lukewarm reviews.  I'm probably going to try to start my marathon with a positive review, so I will *probably* not end up posting these in the order with which I'm watching.

The reason I'm saying this is because it may not necessarily make sense how I frame this review by referencing that I'm coming off two somewhat disappointing movies when in fact I may have posted a glowing review of another movie before this.  Or maybe I'll post Barbary Coast first.

From what I can gather, Barbary Coast is considered "lesser Hawks."  Enjoyable, but not his best work.  I have seen at least one of his movies considered "his best work" and I liked this lesser Hawks movie more than that.

Barbary Coast tells the story of a woman traveling to San Francisco to marry a man during the height of the gold rush.  Only when she gets there, that man has already been killed.  This bothers her less because she loved the man and more because she wanted his money.

She refocuses her efforts towards making money for a crime boss by running a fixed game and attracting clientele with her beauty.  She is apparently one of the very few white women in San Francisco during that time.

Barbary Coast was filmed at the very beginning of the influence of what is known as "the Hays code," a destructive censorship of films that sterilized films for about 20 years.  When the first draft of this movie was written, it may have been written with the idea that this film would not be censored.  The production code was not strictly enforced until the middle of 1934.

In any case, the first draft of this movie was entirely different than what was on screen, because it was roundly rejected by Joseph Breen, a man who had way too much power over the motion picture industry at the time.  So it got changed into a love story.

Interestingly, you can read subtext into what happens.  "Swan" who is played by Miriam Hopkins works for crime boss Luis Chamalis (Edward G Robinson) and in a modern movie, you could have their relationship play out with the understanding that something else is probably going on without actually having any scene make it explicit.

Of course the movie goes to great pains to make sure it's known that Luis is frustrated he can't be with her.  But his controlling nature and the fact that she seems to live with him...could indicate they sleep together.  Certainly makes more sense than them not sleeping together, giving his attachment and loyalty to her. 

The reason why I think you basically have to assume they are sleeping together despite evidence on screen that they are not - because they couldn't get away with it at the time - is because she is shown as pragmatic and willing to do anything to get money early on, including being betrothed to a man she has never met.  He is a mob boss who wants her badly.  She has enough influence on him later in the movie to prevent a newspaper man who is trying to expose him from being killed.  Like come on.  We, the audience, can just pretend that this is a thing happening in the background of their relationship.

In the meantime, his controlling nature causes her to leave in a rage, even though it's raining.  It ends up pouring and she ends up shacking in an abandoned cabin, where she meets the love interest, Joel McCrea.  She previously thought she couldn't love, but instantly feels a connection to this stranger.

But he's leaving back for New York, and when a ship gets delayed, he gets roped into gambling at the very place where Swan works.  He gets mad at her for sucking her in, and ends up getting whatever the 1850 equivalent of roofied was, and loses all his money gambling at her table.  He regrets his actions later, and ends up working for Luis.

Interestingly, there is a whole another subplot going on in this movie that seems kind of out of place.  While she's on the boat to meet the man she never will marry, she meets the newspaper man she later saves.  He is noble and dedicated to this new city and ends up starting a newspaper.  He's idealistic and wants to expose the crime boss, but after threatened, he's forced to ignore it.

In what ended up feeling really rushed, he unwisely stands up to a thug who works for the crime boss and gets himself killed.  A vigilante group ends up having had enough and starts to stand up against this boss who controls everything.

This is a case of too many things going on.  Because nothing about that situation is bad, but it seems tacked on.  And oddly enough, it was probably a major part of the first draft.  The problem is just that it's a plot point that required more screen time.  

This is a 90 minute movie.  And for the first half, things are well-paced.  And then she meets her love interest, and that's the dominant storyline for the second half, which relegates the subplot about cleaning up the city to maybe less than 10 minutes?  The pieces were in place, the movie just wasn't long enough and trust me, that is not a criticism I will usually levy against a movie.

The actors are all good.  I've been watching a lot of Miriam Hopkins lately - less on purpose and more she just happened to be in movies that came my way - and she hasn't disappointed me yet.  Edward G Robinson never really manages to be genuinely threatening, but he's not a weak point by any means.  Joel McCrea is appropriately dreamy.  But of all the actors, I really enjoyed Walter Brennan as Old Atrocity, the rascal with the secret heart of gold.  He's a favorite of Hawks, so I'll be seeing him in more movies in this marathon.

Despite the fact that an interesting subplot of Barbary Coast ended up getting the short shift, I did enjoy this movie.  I enjoyed the world building of San Francisco circa Gold Rush days, I enjoyed the performances, and I enjoyed the love story, possibly because it was only half the movie and because the conflicts felt like something that would actually happen.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

With the start of my Howard Hawks marathon, I'd thought I'd start with one of his more popular movies.  This is pretty inarguably one of his most well-known movies and certainly the most well-known of the Hawks movies I've seen so far.  

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is one of those movies that so deeply permeates pop culture that you are probably aware of this movie without ever really knowing why or how.  You've probably heard one of the songs or someone covering the song or someone parodying a scene without realizing the original source.

And then there's Marilyn Monroe.  I believe, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, this was the movie that catapulted her into stardom.  Everyone who ever thought about Marilyn Monroe after this movie associated her with her dimwitted and gold-digging character.  Hell, I'm pretty sure my impression of Monroe was essentially her character in this movie before I even knew who she was.

As far the quality of the movie, I'll say this without intending it as a slight.  I'll like it more on rewatch.  Two reasons.  First, it took me a while to get over Monroe's voice.  Not her singing voice.  Her talking voice. 

Look, I realize her voice was sexy for the time and probably still is for a lot of people, but it got old fast.  It's like listening to an adult try to talk like a child.  Not for me.  And I don't know if I got used to it or if she toned it down for the 2nd half, but this was a 1st half of the movie problem for me.

Secondly, I didn't "get" what this movie was doing for most of the movie.  It didn't really hit me that I was watching a satire.  It's one of those things that makes me feel stupid for not realizing it earlier, but at the same time, having watched a few musicals from back in the day, some of the vapid material really is vapid.  Not really the case here.

The movie wasn't written by a woman, but it was based off a novel that was written by a woman, Anita Loos.  The novel was the second best selling novel of 1926 and was critically loved by her fellow authors at the time.  She adapted it to the stage in 1949 for a Broadway musical, upon which this movie is based.  So her fingerprints are all over it.

So understanding it's a satire helps with everything else essentially.  The complete abandonment of anything resembling reality is easier to take.  I realize a lot of musicals do that, and I want to stress that when I say that I am not talking about people breaking out into song and dance numbers.  For example, the entire courtroom scene is absurd even before the musical number.  It just so happens to have a greater justification than most musicals.

Now, I realize this is a Hawks marathon, but I'm not sure what to say about his involvement.  He has admitted that he didn't direct the musical numbers, because he had no desire to.  Considering the appeal of a musical is the musical numbers and that it means he directed like half of the actual movie, I'm left a bit blank on what to say about him.

In fact, a constant thing with Hawks is the lack of an obvious directorial hand in his movies.  His directing can be invisible.  So, I feel like talking about Hawks movies may just mean I talk about the quality of his movies and that will be an extension of Hawks' abilities themselves.

In the meantime, despite this being known as a Marilyn Monroe movie, I liked Jane Russell more.  She even does a hilarious Monroe impression herself in a courtroom late in the movie.  She just has the better character, and to be fair to Monroe, that was the probably the intention.  Russell was the bigger star before filming.  Monroe just happened to steal the movie (in the public's eye).

This is a funny movie, and I suspect funnier once I'm in on the joke.  There are two scenes involving a young kid, played by George Winslow, and he just absolutely steals the movie with his deadpan, adult-like speech.  When Monroe gets caught in a window (where she also gets to show off her comic chops) and he agrees to help her and when he is the rich guy Monroe wanted to sit next to - without knowing it was a small child.

My biggest wonder is if I'll like Monroe's voice the second time around.  It was seriously hampering my enjoyment of the movie.  I know that may sound absurd to those who are in love with it, but it veers very close to adult baby talk to me.  For now, I'll have to give a speculative rating, though I wouldn't be surprised if it will go higher on rewatch.

3/4 stars

Howard Hawks Marathon

I liked the Orson Welles marathon so much that I was dedicated to focusing on another writer/actor/director for my next feature.  This is actually a pretty rare phenomenon so my options were limited, but I landed on John Cassevetes, the king of independent film.  

But that didn't really work out.  I really wanted to watch his first leading or co-leading role first.  I tend not to care about watching movies in a specific order, but he was an established actor before he directed a movie so that's where I wanted to start.  It was not easily available anywhere, and that coupled with a few of his directed features also not being accessible, I decided to move onto a director with an easier to watch filmography.

It wasn't long after that that I landed on Howard Hawks.  Before starting this, I had seen a grand total of one Howard Hawks film, His Girl Friday.  I watched it without fully understanding the screwball comedy genre, so I was completely caught off guard by it.  But aside from that, I had seen zero of his movies. 

Hawks is not an obvious choice from the outset.  He's been nominated for Best Director just once and his pictures were never nominated for Best Picture.  He's been nominated for three directing awards by the directors' guild, but never won.  He was not particularly critically acclaimed during his time.

But he seems to benefit from time.  Influential film critic Andrew Sarris said Hawks was the least known and least appreciated Hollywood director of any stature.  Critic Leonard Maltin called him the greatest American director who isn't a household name.  A French film magazine, Cahiers du cinéma, loved, loved Hawks and the French in general were the first to claim him as an all-time great.  Jean-Luc Godard has called him the greatest American director.

In addition to that, he has eight movies in the 1,001 movies to watch before you die, eight movies in the New York Times 1,000 best sound movies ever made, two movies in Ebert's Great Movies list, and seven movies from the 501 Must See Movies.  He's retroactively a highly acclaimed director.

He's also a very obvious fit for a marathon.  Hawks dabbled in just about every genre, which some theorize tended to make him underrated.  John Ford is known for the Western, Alfred Hitchcock for the thriller.  Hawks meanwhile make gangster films, Westerns, romantic comedies, romantic dramas, musicals, comedies, film noirs, war pictures, and adventures.

He is primarily known for helping to popularize the screwball comedy with Twentieth Century in 1934, but he made four other movies that are also screwball comedies, and two musicals that could be classified in the screwball genre.  But he also made just as many Westerns.  He taught aviators to fly in World War I, and made at least four pictures focused on aviation due to his love of it.

His only nomination for Best Director came from a war picture.  One of his most well-known movies, Scarface, was a gangster flick.  He only made one film noir (to my knowledge), The Big Sleep, but it's on just about every best of film noir list you'll find.  He has a few adventure movies, and my suspicion is that it will have some screwball like elements.

All in all, you have all the ingredients for a good marathon.  With a wide variety of movies, I don't think I'll get burnt out from watching his movies.  I can jump from a screwball comedy to a war movie to a Western.  Plus, he worked with the stars of the era a lot, so I can see everyone from Carole Lombard to Humphrey Bogart to John Wayne to Marilyn Monroe.

So I'm pretty excited.  Over the next couple months, because Hawks made so many movies, I'll be watching most of his catalogue - at least what I can.  A surprising amount of his movies are on Youtube or Dailymotion.   A few are on HBOMax or Amazon Prime.  I only do not have access to a few of his movies, and I'm hoping TCM, who frequently air his movies, will come in clutch for those few.  If not, well I'll still get to near 20 of his movies.

Broadcast News (1987)

 In his long, illustrious career, James L. Brooks, most famous for developing The Simpsons, has only directed six movies.  He actually has one of the stranger careers I've seen.  He started out as a television writer, jumping from show to show until he apparently developed a knack for selling TV shows. 

By the time he directed his first movie, Terms of Endearment, he had gotten a "created by" credit from eight different TV shows, all of which were off the air by that point.  He seemed disinterested in actually writing anything - of those eight shows, he only wrote for Mary Tyler Moore Show beyond the pilot and that was still just six total episodes.  He had also written one movie, which was decently reviewed but nothing special.

And then with Terms of Endearment, he got a chance to direct his own written work.  It was nominated for 11 Oscars and won five of them, including Best Director and Best Picture.  Four years later, he wrote and directed his follow-up, Broadcast News.

I liked Terms of Endearment quite a bit.  It wasn't nominated for 11 Oscars good, but it was a pretty good movie.  Broadcast News is better.  

Broadcast News has a lot going on.  It's a love triangle between a handsome, but dull anchorman and a brilliant, yet prickly news reporter.  Having to navigate these two options is a workaholic producer, who has constant breakdowns.

... But that's not really what the film is about.  It's about the fight for news itself.  On one side is Tom Grunick, played by William Hurt, who represents news as entertainment.  On the other side is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), who thinks of news as some higher calling, that they should report the news without regard to ratings.

In the middle is Jane, played by Holly Hunter, who agrees more with Altman.  She doesn't want news to become entertainment.  She wants news to be compelling because the news is so compelling.  But the problem is Altman kind of sucks.  She's not attracted to him.  She is attracted to Grunick, but she also sort of hates everything he represents.

Grunick is charismatic, aware of his faults and seems to be trying to be better.  But, in this parable of the news, he also dumbs down his viewership.  Everyone in the news is trying to do their best to actually report the news, but ratings is king.  Grunick wants to be better, but he also understands what makes compelling television and that's ultimately what's going to win out.

Conversely, Altman is dying to be an anchor.  He's a very good on-field reporter, but when he gets his chance to anchor on a day where most everyone else is at a party, he fails miserably.  He'll certainly report exactly what we need to hear, but it won't be compelling television.

Broadcast News was made 34 years ago, and the fight represented in this movie has been lost, so much so that modern viewers may not even perceive what exactly Grunick is doing wrong.  (And in fact, I believe his "ultimate sin" was already standard practice at the time, something I am completely willing to overlook because of what it symbolizes).  The dull, handsome anchor is what we get.

The three leads were all nominated for an Academy Award and, while I haven't seen that many 1987 movies, they all deserved it.  I have seen Moonstruck though, and Holly Hunter deserved it over Cher.  I'll say that.  Hunter was amazing in this movie.  She's the glue holding this movie together.

I'll also give some credit to Brooks, who by all accounts should be the guy the audience is rooting for.  He has the more honorable symbolic position to news after all.  But Brooks can be mean.  He responds to a rape survivor's tearful story with a sardonic quip (he's watching her on TV, not like face to face thank god).  It certainly complicates matters that Altman is nothing but mean to Grunick, and Grunick couldn't be a nicer, more humble guy.

Hurt meanwhile gets to play the extremely rare self-aware dumb guy.  He knows he's dumb.  He knows he only has the job for his looks and charm, and not for any news-related reason.  This is all stuff that in 2021, we would probably scoff at.  A news anchor got the job for his looks and charm?  Well aren't those the only requirements?  Evidently, once upon a time, they actually had to be respected newsmen.

What makes the movie good is that while it clearly seems to lean towards the side of news for the sake of news and not entertainment, Grunick IS better at being a news anchor.  When he does his thing with Hunter screaming in his ear half the time, he presents a clean, successful broadcast.  Grunick knows what a good news broadcast is.  There's a place for this.  It just shouldn't be the only thing.

I make it sound like this is a lesson, but these are themes that are naturally revealed through its characters.  It is not a movie for the sake of lecturing the audience, Brooks created complex characters where their actions felt natural.  The fact that it also works as a commentary on the state of journalism is nothing short of amazing to me.

The third thing that works for this movie is that it's just a fun, seemingly accurate look at how making a news television show happens.  There's an early scene that helps capture the thrill and terror that makes you understand why these characters have dedicated their lives to it.  I am not really a fan of the man's work, but there's no way Aaron Sorkin wasn't heavily influenced by this movie.  Just to give you an idea.

Most movies barely work on one level.  Broadcast News, in my opinion, works on three levels.  It's a love triangle, and and a compelling one with a conclusion that's fit to the story its telling importantly.  It's a fight between old journalism and new journalism.  And it's a fascinating look into high stakes, live television.

4/4 stars

Gaslight (1944)

Do you know what the most difficult part of watching older movies is?  It's not that it's in black-and-white.  It's not that it's boring.  It's the acting.  For what I would call an embarrassingly long time, the acting profession as a whole did not learn how to act in front of a camera.  They just acted like they would on a stage.

In some movies, this is less of a problem because there's not necessarily an emphasis on the acting or there just aren't many complex emotions in the movie.  For example, just about every Jimmy Stewart movie features Jimmy Stewart playing Jimmy Stewart, so it doesn't feel like he's acting.  Which... is basically what we want to see.  We don't want to feel like the actor is acting.  And when they perform as if they are in a large theater, you notice how much they're trying to act.

I bring this up specifically in this post, because Gaslight was this close to really standing out as one of my favorite movies ever.  But that pesky acting.  Specifically, Charles Boyer's performance... lacks charm.  There is essentially no indication given in this movie as to why exactly Ingrid Bergman would fall for him.  She just does.  This is a weakness that is just hard for me to ignore.

Again, asking an actor to pull off the dual role of being charming, loving, and then making that same person seem believable as someone who was also capable of being vicious and manipulative... that was simply not a thing in 1944.  Boyer is manipulative from the get go, but not in a particularly subtle way.  It's not the dialogue's fault.  Boyer just plays him as openly manipulative immediately.  

It's just over an hour of us getting to watch a woman doubt herself while an obviously manipulative man lies to her face over and over.  And if Boyer had done a better job of seeming convincing at the beginning, it would have been more effective and horrifying.  And it's not completely his fault.  The script asks us to accept she would love him completely based on... one loving scene with her and he very quickly gets to work on manipulating her to live in London.

Ingrid Bergman fares better, but if Wikipedia is to believed, this is considered to be up there for the greatest performances ever.  That would be an exaggeration in my opinion.  She's very good in the movie though, and up until the scene where she confronts him, plays it a lot more subtle than some actors would at the time.  I can definitely see why see won an Oscar for her performance.

Also nominated was Boyer, and well, my complaints aside, he does play the manipulative husband well, and Angela Lansbury in her first ever movie.  Yes, that Angela Lansbury, who was either 18 or 19 when this was filmed.  She's good, but the nomination might fool you into thinking she has a greater presence in this movie than she actually does.

Aside from the performances, I think my greatest issue with the film is just that it ends up dragging.  The length is not the problem, but with how the film chooses to spend that length.  The movie speeds through plot in its first 10 minutes to get to the movie's setup, and then for over an hour, we get a variation of roughly the same scene over and over again.

All in all, I'm making it sound like I didn't think this was a good movie.  But I think it is.  I think the movie certainly has too many scenes of Bergman's character doubting herself and her husband purposefully misleading her, but only by about 10-20 minutes.  It's actually very effective in showing how someone, specifically a woman, can be gaslit.  There is no surprise why the term gaslight is named after this movie.

Have Boyer dial down his performance early in the movie, maybe add a scene or two of them falling in love in place of the manipulation scenes, and this would be one of the best movies.  But I think it falls just short for the reasons I laid out above.

3/4 stars