Howard Hawks
Publication Year: 2006
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Cover
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
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pp. v-vi
Foreword
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pp. vii-ix
When the British film journal Movie published its first issue in 1962, it featured a chart that ranked directors according to their auteurist status, like Andrew Sarris's infamous "pantheon." Only two directors...
Introduction to 2006 Edition
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pp. xi-xxv
Of all my early books (by which I mean those written before the early 1970s, when film criticism became film theory with the explosion of semiotics, and my own work was fundamentally transformed...
1. Introduction to 1981 Edition
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pp. 1-10
There is a tendency to make the distinction between 'art' and 'entertainment' too rigid: the terms are even used as if they referred to directly opposed, mutually exclusive phenomena. Any attempt to define either will show...
2. Self-Respect and Responsibility
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pp. 11-51
Only Angels Have Wings is a completely achieved masterpiece, and a remarkably inclusive film, drawing together the main thematic threads of Hawks's work in a single complex web. The opening shots vividly create Barranca...
3. The Lure of Irresponsibility
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pp. 52-82
It may seem perverse to approach the comedies via a gangster film of exceptional ferocity, almost the only Hawks film in which the protagonist dies. But Scarface belongs with the comedies. There are interesting parallels between...
4. The Group
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pp. 83-106
No two Hawks groups are quite the same—they are too much composed of individuals—and the nature of the group often differs radically from film to film. Red Line 7000 shows it at its loosest and most heterogeneous...
5. Male Relationships
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pp. 107-123
A Girl in Every Port is the first example in Hawks's work of *a love story between two men'; it points forward especially to The Big Sky. The early film is the more fully realised: but The Big Sky is the more interesting and it has by far the more acceptable...
6. The Instinctive Consciousness
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pp. 124-145
Often in Hawks strong superficial resemblances between films conceal deeper differences. If time and repeated viewings have confirmed Hatari!'s inferiority to Rio Bravo—it isn't the film one would send anyone to to convince...
7. Down the Valley of the Shadow
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pp. 146-156
El Dorado is, at the moment, the most difficult of Hawks's films to come to terms with. Its relationship to Rio Bravo poses a number of difficulties, and commonly provokes two reactions: the critic who doesn't rate Hawks particularly high...
Appendix: Failures and Marginal Works
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pp. 157-166
Hawks disowns Land of the Pharaohs, and requested its omission from the retrospective at the National Film Theatre in 1963. He accounts for its failure very simply: 'I didn't know how a Pharaoh talked5; a statement that gives an important...
Retrospect
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pp. 167-181
I am on principle against revising one's past work: it can lead only to confusion and anomaly. Inevitably, one moves on; were I to write a book on Hawks today, it would differ not merely in occasional sentences and a few judgments...
Filmography
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pp. 182-209
Acknowledgements
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pp. 210-
I want to acknowledge a general indebtedness to the criticism of Dr F. R. Leavis. There is no question of direct influence (I should be surprised to learn that Dr Leavis had ever heard of Howard Hawks); but I feel that any strength this book may be felt to have derives from the basis of...
Back Cover
E-ISBN-13: 9780814338377
Print-ISBN-13: 9780814332764
Page Count: 240
Illustrations: 71
Publication Year: 2006
Edition: 2
Series Title: Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series
