Howard Hawks | Twentieth Century | Ball of Fire | The Big Sleep | Hatari! | Rio Lobo

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Howard Hawks

Twentieth Century

Hawks' technique in Twentieth Century (1934) is apparently simple:

• Groups: Medium shots. The majority of the shots show all the actors involved in a scene at once. Usually there are just two actors, engaged in a dialogue, sometimes 3 or more. The camera is as close as it can be, and still see both actors, their arm movements, and any props necessary in the scene.
• Single Actor: Medium Close shots. Occasionally Hawks cuts into a closer, but not too close, shot of just one of the actors. The cutting can highlight a line, or an entrance of the actor to the scene. This cutting can add visual variety to a scene; it can also give a rhythm to the scene, where the film alternates between a group shot and a single actor shot.

There is little reverse angle cutting. Instead, Hawks shoots the scenes as if someone were looking on and watching. There is an invisible viewer in Hawks who watches everything.

Occasionally the single actor shots change an angle, for example, the shots of the characters entering or leaving train cars. These are set at around a 60 degree angle to the previous frontal shots. The angle seems "natural": it is the best view an onlooker could get of the character entering the car.

Ball of Fire

Ball of Fire (1941) is one of Hawks' best comedies.

Panoramas

• In the night club scenes, Hawks pans over the huge set, filled with people of all sorts, patrons and musicians.
• In the foundation work room, one shot shows the professors arriving in the morning, taking off their jackets, and seating themselves at their desks. This panorama encompasses many different desks at once, spread out over the large room.

Film Noir

Ball of Fire came out the year when Hollywood was first beginning to produce film noir, 1941. It has features that look back to the earlier Hollywood paradigm for crime movies, the gangster film. All of the crooks in Ball of Fire are gangsters, and they behave in gangland ways, bumping off opponents, and holding people captive with Tommy guns. They are also pursued by a tough, incorruptible District Attorney. The heroine of the film is a gangster's moll. On the surface, this film fits in to the traditional gangster film genre.

But Ball of Fire also has elements that look forward to the new genre, film noir:

• The movie revolves around a choice made by the heroine, whether to marry the honest hero of the film, or its gangster villain. This anticipates the similar dilemma in The Big Sleep, in which heroine Vivian Sternwood (Lauren Bacall) seems sometimes to be involved with gangster Eddie Mars, and sometimes with detective Philip Marlowe. In both films, the gangster is a man of tremendous personal charm, played by a leading man type, and dressed in high fashion suits. The subject of a sexual and romantic duel, fought within the heroine's feelings, links these films to the emotional obsessions that are so important in film noir.
• The foundation home is dominated by two giant staircases, frequently used by Hawks to stage the action. Such staircase imagery is common in noir.
• We see the heroine in bed, also a noir locale.
• The sharp double breasted suits worn by the crooks will soon be the uniform of countless noir characters.
• The wedding clothes worn by everyone, both crooks and honest characters, at the end of the picture, will also show up in many noir films, which frequently include weddings as a subject.
• The main crooks are played by Dana Andrews and Dan Duryea, two actors that will become noir icons. Both will frequently appear in films for Fritz Lang. It is odd to see Dana Andrews in a bad guy role - he mainly played heroes throughout his career. He has a snarling viciousness here under his surface charm that is very menacing.
• Clocks per se will rarely show up in Ball of Fire. But there will be constant discussion of time and schedules.
• Mirror effects mainly show up in the match drumming sequence, with Barbara Stanwyck's face reflected in the polished table surface.
• Gene Krupa's enthusiastic drumming scene here anticipates Elisha Cook's famous drumming scene in Robert Siodmak's film noir Phantom Lady (1944). Oddly enough, Elisha Cook is present in this scene, too, as a waiter in the night club where Krupa plays. In both films, the drumming carries an explosive sexual charge.

Hawks Themes

The ending of the film, in which the group of scientist heroes struggles against the gangster villains, anticipates Hawks' great final Westerns, Rio Bravo (1959) and El Dorado (1967). In both films, the good guys seem weak and powerless against the bad guys. But the good guys show brains, determination and pluck, and eventually triumph over their sinister opponents.

The most effeminate of the professor heroes (played by the delightful Richard Haydn) is the one that shows the most courageous resistance to the gangsters here. This is an unexpected and imaginative development. It is part of Hawks' celebration of homosexuality, something that runs throughout his filmmaking career. The bonding between the professors here, like that of the good guy groups in the Westerns, is also deeply homosexual in nature.

The Big Sleep

The original, pre-release version of The Big Sleep (1945) seems to me to be vastly superior to the 1946 version, the only one that has been available for most of the time since 1946. It is not that there is anything wrong with the new scenes Hawks added to beef up Lauren Bacall's role. Rather, the extensive cuts made in the original continuity rendered the story nearly incomprehensible. I am not the only person who found the 1946 version hard to follow - a long list of critics have recorded their complete bafflement. By contrast, the 1945 version tells a complete, logical story. This film is based on the 1939 detective novel by Raymond Chandler.

Seeing the complete version has profound effects on how we view the characters. Humphrey Bogart's detective now seems like a person of substance. He works hard and achieves what he sets out to do: find the whereabouts of the missing good guy Sean Regan, and protect blackmailed daughter Carmen Sternwood from the hoods who are threatening her. These are worthwhile tasks. Accomplishing them is a grown-up moral victory, something anyone can admire and be proud of. It also justifies Bogart's defiance of the police: he is on a mission to help the powerless, and his independence is a form of gallantry. Bogart's detective also becomes one of Hawks' long line of professionals: someone who sticks to his job in an admirable fashion. Similarly, the Lauren Bacall character is a person who is similarly admirable and stalwart in trying to aid first her sister, then Bogart as well.

All of this is chopped to mincemeat in the 1946 version. The story seems absurd in the literal sense of the term: just a series of meaningless, incomprehensible events stuck together. Nothing in it seems to have any significance. It is virtually an abstract dance the characters go through. Bogart seems to be posing as a detective or going through the motions, but nothing meaningful or coherent is occurring. Some critics deeply admire this abstraction, reading all sorts of existential profundities in it, suggesting it conveys the alleged meaninglessness of life. They also view it as a satire a detective fiction, a genre they plainly hate. This is a point of view that deeply grates on me.

The 1945 version has other positive effects as well. There is now much more male bonding between Bogart and policeman Regis Toomey, such camaraderie being a Hawks specialty. We see Bogart similarly interacting with other police characters, as well. Several later cut scenes show Bogart doing detective work, something that enhances his status as a detective professional. There is more atmosphere in this version, with grading between different scenes, and a logical progression of mood. The films seems more like a lived experience, and less like an absurd jumble of scenes.

Hatari!

Hatari! (1962) is a film about animal trappers in Africa.

Genre: The Trapper-for-Zoos Films

• Shot on location.
• Set in Africa.
• Features trappers who capture animals alive and unharmed for zoos.

Prestige directors also worked in this mode. John Ford shot Mogambo (1953) in Africa, with Clark Gable as the trapper-for-zoos.

The genre continued after Hatari!, with the popular TV series Daktari (1966-1969) - although this is less about a trapper, and more about a veternarian. While the genre is small, and clearly not as developed as such prolific genres as the Western, science fiction or film noir, it still has its own niche.

Rio Lobo

Rio Lobo (1970) is a beautiful movie. Much of it takes place in the countryside. There is a renewed emphasis by Hawks on pictorialism. Rio Lobo does not have an "invisible style", as people sometimes describe Hawks.

In The Country

Animals - a persistent Hawks metaphor - show up, with hornets used in the raid, and a memorable shot of a thrown chicken.

More surprisingly, plants play a big role. There are two contrasting ecosystems:

• The train robbery takes place in pine country. The pines, with their sparse branches intermixed with ropes, make original compositions. Shots of the Captain hiding behind yarrow flowers are also memorable.
• Later, at Elam's cabin, we are in desert. The three good guys are framed against a pair of ocotillo (those wiry shrubs) and cacti are all around the cabin. Once again, the Captain is shown sneaking behind low plants, here a shrub.

Counter Culture

The heroine also gives some Women's Lib speeches.

Characters

The Captain by this time is one of Hawks' Western heroes in leather gear, like Dewey Martin in The Big Sky and James Caan in El Dorado. He has to get dressed, in a key meet-cute scene.

The Train Robbery

The engine is #17. Throughout the history of films and comic books, phallic symbol numbers like 1, 4, 7 and 9 frequently appear. This is documented in my article Sports Numbers and Their Symbolism.