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