Apparently taking a long break after his Pharaohs epic, Hawks’ subsequent pictures tried to recapture the spirit of movie stars as great company, people that can charm us just by trading small talk or singing songs. The lack of a clear story was irrelevant in To Have and Have Not, which concocts a ‘cinematic place’ we’d be happy to visit anytime – heaven might be the ability to hang outwith the likes of Bogart, Bacall and Hoagy Carmichael. Hawks of course shone in the ’30s and ’40s with an unending array of movies that seemed made of pure entertainment. Marianna Hill gives her part energy and style but didn’t catch the brass ring, and Charlene Holt only won a chance to come back and play another thankless Hawks role in El Dorado. The one winner in the stack is top-billed James Caan, whose character is so foul, we want to shove him under a shop hoist. Where does that leave Red Line 7000, yet another regulation Hawks look at macho guys pursuing a violent profession? This time around he has no big names and instead seems to be nominating a new generation of ‘Hawks discoveries,’ his idea of what youthful stars should be. Where I part company with Hawks fans are his beloved late-career westerns - to me Rio Bravo is stale posturing, and his later revisits of the same material are tepid, fossilized replays of things that he once did better than anyone else in Hollywood. I can be energized by auteurist games well enough to appreciate how Hawks’ Monkey Business is related to his Scarface and The Thing from Another World. I personally love Land of the Pharaohs (to witness its demolition consult David Cairns) and can squeak by with Man’s Favorite Sport? because it has the all-healing Paula Prentiss. Written by George Kirgo story by Howard HawksĬritics have been raking Howard Hawks’ stock car racing epic over the coals ever since Robin Wood couldn’t see his way through to defend it in the heyday of the auteur theory. Starring: James Caan, Laura Devon, Gail Hire, Charlene Holt, John Robert Crawford, Marianna Hill, James (Skip) Ward, Norman Alden, George Takei, Diane Strom, Anthony Rogers, Robert Donner, Teri Garr. Street Date Septem/ available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 But hey, it has a hypnotic appeal all its own: we’ll not abandon any movie where Teri Garr dances.ġ965 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. The epitome of clueless ’60s filmmaking by an auteur who left his thinking cap back with Bogie and Bacall, this show is a PC quagmire lacking the usual compensation of exploitative thrills. It’s finally here in all its glory, the Howard Hawks movie nobody loves.
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