Initial Thoughts on Howard Hawks

I'm not quite sure what to say about Howard Hawks. Sure he is one of the great Hollywood directors, and one of the few who was able to work in various genres of film and making them his own. I've watched his best films time and time again and consider them my favorites, the problem I have with his is I just don't know how to describe them.

Howard Hawks was a maverick if there ever was one, he worked in every genre, with every studio and star known to man. It didn't seem to matter what kind of film it was in the beginning, Hawks would always make it uniquely his. Hawks could be thought of as a very stylish director, but he also could make very harrowing and realistic portraits of real men and women.

Hawks' best film dealt with the relationships and camaraderie towards men, there was a certain fraternity in them, and sometimes women were invited into the club. This type of film was probably best exemplified in his two best films "Only Angels Have Wings" and "Rio Bravo". Both of those films are about men facing dangerous and almost impossible odds, but Hawks always sticks to their relationship as friends and as professionals. In both of those films, a woman is brought into the mix but their is always a touch of toughness to their character. Hawks was known as a masculine filmmaker who made movies about men and for men, but by doing this he made some of the best roles for women as well who could do what the men did just as well or even better. Think of Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday", or Barbara Stanwyck in "Ball of Fire", or Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep".

Hawks also mastered a more realistic way of speaking. In the early sound era when actors spoke more crisp and clearly in order to be heard through the microphone, the films sometimes lost some of its weight, while Hawks who was an engineer experimented with ways of speaking on film. He mastered the overlapping of dialogue which gave his films (particularly his comedies) a hipper more fast paced edge.

Though often to compared to fellow maverick John Ford, Hawks was quite different with his technique. Ford often let his images tell the story in a certain poetic manner, while Hawks was more interested in relationships, and his style came through with the way he would handle the situation and the characters. Hawks was more gritty than the more refined Ford, sometimes his imagery wasn't subtle and it didn't have to be. Look at the original "Scarface" which in my opinion still stands as the best of the early gangster films, where Hawks would cleverly place an "X" somewhere on screen everytime someone was killed.

Howard Hawks was underrated in his time, today it's hard to imagine that he only received one Academy Award nomination for Best Director "Sgt. York", a film that is better remembered for Gary Cooper's performance than a true Howard Hawks film. Hawks films never got the recognition they deserved perhaps because like Hitchcock, he often worked in popular genre. His films have only grown in appreciation today, and Hawks himself can also be thought of as a pioneer of the independent movement since he was one of the first directors to finance his films himself.

No matter what decade, no matter what genre, Howard Hawks' films are a testament to the golden age of cinema, when he decided to make a film he would own it.