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: 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

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.