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.
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