New Cinema Scope

It's that time of year again when Cinema Scope puts out their new winter issue. Just from the looks of the director's listed on the cover, and what I know, the issue will feature essays on Jodie Mack, Joanna Hogg, Lois Patiño, Robert Beavers, David Rimmer, Jerry Lewis, Aleksei German, the Coen brothers and Philippe Garrel. In it you can expect high quality film criticism from an array of writers from Toronto and abroad on a variety of films that are expanding the frame on international cinema. From the looks of its beautiful Jodie Mack cover the issue will heavily feature experimental filmmakers. The new issue should be available for purchase in the next couple of weeks or better yet you can have it delivered to your house if you get a subscription!

La última película interview

  Follow the link to watch some making-of and deleted scenes from La última película : http://vimeo.com/user14634088

Inside Llewyn Davis opening soon

MDFF Presents Nathan Silver (Dec 18, 7PM)

Re-Print: Hawks on Hawks

Broadly speaking, what is a Howard Hawks film? Typically there is a strong-willed protagonist who works within a tight group, where maybe one member has a personal demon they need to confront, and then the group dynamics gets shaken by an assertive women who joins them, while they also confront an external threat. Hawks has worked in almost every genre and most of them somewhat reflect this schema. His world is one of action where friendship is important, relationships are mysterious, violent threats are overcome, people die, and life goes on. 

Howard Hawks is one of the most important directors in the history of cinema and reading his thoughts in Hawks on Hawks, a book-length interview with Joseph McBride, from late in his life, is fascinating for his remarks, observations and entertaining anecdotes on his films and career. 

There aren't too many good books on Hawks. And it's great that Hawks on Hawks is back in print along with a recent enough re-print of Robin Wood's Howard Hawks. But how come Todd McCarthy's epic Howard Hawks biography is still out of print? And how come Noel Howard's Hollywood sur Nil, on the making of The Land of Pharaohs, has never been translated? And why isn't George Plympton Shoot-Out at Rio Lobo available? And what about the footage from the Academy Awards where Hawks received a life-time achievement award? Where is the new writing on Hawks by today's younger film writers? 

The new edition of Hawks on Hawks, which was initially published in 1982, does not even include a new introduction, contextualizing its original historical position, and according to Wood's revised introduction The Land of Pharaohs is still a failure. There is something wrong with this situation and it needs to be resolved.

How can one measure Hawks' influence today? Is it because Hawks' style is invisible, not as poetic as Ford's, that his influence is harder to evaluate? Is his approach closer to the television series format as illustrated by the work of Aaron Sorkin? How come Fig Leaves, Scarface, Rio Bravo and Man's Favorite Sport aren't remembered today?

In Monkey Business and I Was a Male War Bride Hawks was already commenting on the notion of identity as a social construct and blurring traditional gender norms, which seems relevant today as some of the most interesting films are about mutating humans experiencing the limits of bodily experiences whether it is in last year's Cosmopolis and Holy Motors and in slightly more calm register Tower and Krivina, or this year in the liberation of phantasms and desires as shown in L'Inconnu du lac, Spring Breakers, Les Rencontres d'après minuit, La Vie d'Adèle, A Touch of Sin, The Oxbow Cure and The Dirties.

Even though thematically these films are similar to Hawks, they might not be stylistically. The directors that do owe to Hawks, in this respect, and can be seen as more clear successors include John Carpenter, Brian de Palma, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, John McTiernan, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Alfonso Cuarón, Hayao Miyazaki and the Farrelly brothers. Now that's a broad influence!

There are still fascinating things going on in cinema today and some directors - the good ones! - owe a lot to Hawks. It's time that Hawksian cinephiles pick him up again and re-visit his work. If the major voices and outlets of film criticism do not want to go into this direction, it will be up to the online film community of bloggers to do so!

Highlights from Hawks on Hawks

-       “All I’m doing is telling a story. I don’t analyze or do a lot of thinking about it. I work on the fact that if I like somebody and think they’re attractive, I can make them attractive. If I think a thing’s dramatic, the audience does. I’m very lucky that way. I don’t stop to analyze it. We just made scenes that were fun to do. I think our job is to make entertainment.”

-       “I learned right in the beginning from Jack Ford, and I learned what not to do by watching Cecil DeMille.”

-       “I told John Wayne when we started to work together, “Duke, if you can make three good scenes in this picture and don’t annoy the audience the rest of the time, you’ll be good.” He said, “Do you believe that?” I said, “Yeah. If I make five good scenes in this picture, and don’t annoy the audience, I think I’ll be good.” So he started to work on that.”

-       “Scarface is my favorite picture, even today, because we were completely alone, Hughes and I. Everybody was under contract to the studios. We couldn’t get a studio, and they wouldn’t loan us anybody, so we had to find a cast. They just didn’t want independent pictures made in Hollywood. So we rented a little cobwebbed studio and opened it up and made the picture. It turned out to be the big picture of the year. We didn’t get any help from anybody. And that’s why I think I liked it best.”

-       “Well, would you rather see something dead serious or laugh at something? In the first place, true drama is awfully close to being comedy. The greatest drama in the world is really funny. A man who loses his pants out in front of a thousand people – he’s suffering the tortures of the damned, but he’s awfully funny doing it. I had a damn good teach, Chaplin. Probably our greatest comic.”

-       “I’m getting goddam sick of these pictures, you know, nothing but violence. Peckinpah and I believe in exactly the opposite thing. I like it when it’s so quick that you say, “My god, did it really happen?””

-       “Interesting thing – the last Oscar [1974], everybody said The Exorcist was going to win. I made quite a little money. They offered me five to one and ten to one and twenty to one: I said The Sting. And they came to me afterwards and said, “Why did you say that?” And I said, “There’s only been two good comedies made in four years. One was What’s Up, Doc?, the other was The Sting. None of the rest have been worth calling comedies.””

-       “I try to tell my story as simply as possible, with the camera at eye level. I just imagine the way the story should be told, and I do it.”

-       “I’ve been accused of promoting Women’s Lib, and I’ve denied it, emphatically. It just happens that kind of a woman is attractive to me. I merely am doing somebody that I like. And I’ve seen so many pictures where the hero gets in the moonlight and says silly things to a girl, I’d reverse it and let the girl do the chasing around, you know, and it works out pretty well.”

-       “It taught me a great lesson, that if you make a good scene, if we could do something that was fun, the audience goes right along with you.”

-       “Actually, we didn’t care. It was the first time I made a picture and just decided I wasn’t going to explain things. I was just going to try and make good scenes.”

-       “I don’t think he’s got the greatest vision for a tableau, a long-shot, of any man. One of my favorite pictures of all time is The Quiet Man, which I think was just a beautiful picture. Ford, oh, he’s done some things that are just fabulous. And he was the first man to do them.”

-       “Oh, I think I couldn’t do his brand of humor. His brand of humor was kind of a bucolic travesty of an Irishman, kind of overdrawn characters. I certainly know that I made better comedies than he did. But I don’t think I made better westerns.”

-       “Peter Bogdanovich is good. I think he’s the best of all the young directors. Of the older directors, I admire Carol Reed’s work very much. I like Hitchcock’s work, and Billy Wilder’s. When I think I can learn something, I go to see any of their pictures, but if I think I can’t learn, I don’t go.”

-       “[William] Friedkin was going around with my daughter in New York. He asked me how I liked his last picture, The Boys in the Bad. I said, “if you’re going to be making pictures you’ll have to learn not to ask that. I thought it was lousy.” He said, “I’m interested in why.” I said, “It’s too bad that somebody who has the talent you have should waste his time on junk like that.” He took it all very, very well. I said, “You made another lousy picture before that called The Night They Raided Minsky’s. You’re gonna run out of pictures. They’re not going to let you make them unless you make something that people want to see. And then they’re gonna tell you how to make them.” And he said, “Well, what kind of thing do you mean?” And I said, “Do something that’s entertaining. People seem to like chase scenes. Make a good chase. Make one better than anyone’s done.” And he did it in The French Connection. Did a good job of it.”

Indiegogo: The Ocean is Stupid by Mark Fiorillo

  Help Mark Fiorillo get his film The Ocean is Stupid made by contributing to its Indiegogo campaign.