TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Screwball Comedy, Romantic Comedy, War, Western, Action, Adventure, Buddy Film, Romantic Adventure, Musical Comedy
Key Collaborators: Russell Harlan (Cinematographer), John Wayne (Leading Actor), Cary Grant (Leading Actor), Walter Brennan (Leading Actor), Leigh Brackett (Screenwriter), Dimitri Tiomkin (Composer), Ben Hecht (Screenwriter), William Faulkner (Screenwriter), Jules Furthman (Screenwriter), Charles Lederer (Screenwriter), Seton I. Miller (Screenwriter), Christian Nyby (Editor)

"Hawks’s predilection for understated, everyday heroism, often in the context of the all-male group; his straightforward, direct visual style; and his flair for bringing out unexpected traits in stars like John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Humphrey Bogart were seen as marking Hawks out as special. In the early 1960s Hawks was taken up by auteurist critics in the United States like Andrew Sarris and in the United Kingdom by Movie magazine and Robin Wood, who took Hawks as a supreme example of the understated artistry possible within the Hollywood system." - Jim Hillier (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 2006)

"Hawks has stamped his distinctively bitter view of life on adventure, gangster and private-eye melodramas, Westerns, musicals, and screwball comedies, the kind of thing Americans do best and appreciate least. Now that his work has been thoroughly revived and revaluated throughout the English-speaking world, there is little point in belaboring the point for the few remaining stragglers who maintain that his art is not really Art with a serving of espresso in the lobby. That one can discern the same directorial signature over a wide variety of genres is proof of artistry. That one can still enjoy the genres for their own sake is proof of the artist's professional urge to entertain." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"Far from the the meek purveyor of Hollywood forms, he always chose to turn them upside down, To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, ostensibly an adventure and a thriller, are really love stories. Rio Bravo, apparently a Western - everyone wears a cowboy hat - is a comedy conversation piece. The ostensible comedies are shot through with exposed emotions, with the subtlest views of the sex war, and with a wry acknowledgment of the incompatibility of men and women." - David Thomson, (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Born to a wealthy Midwestern family, Howard Hawks arrived in Southern California around the same time that the movie industry did. With a relentless initiative and restless spirit, Hawks ensured his Hollywood career by quickly becoming a jack of all trades, taking on roles as screenwriter, producer and director by the end of the silent era. While setting up shop at virtually every major studio, Hawks developed a subtle, yet easily recognizable personal style, characterized by unsentimental, straightforward storytelling, unflashy character-focused camera setups, and the use of overlapping dialogue." - American Cinematheque, 2022

"Hawks' visual style was classical, restrained, unpretentious - camera at eye-height, unobtrusive editing, a sparing use of close-ups, camera-movements and emphatic angles - so that the focus was firmly on the often dazzling interplay of words and gestures between characters defined by their actions." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"After a decade of critical rehabilitation, Howard Hawks now stands securely within the triumvirate of classical Hollywood commercial directors: Ford, Hitchcock, and Hawks, with Hawks perhaps playing Adler to their Jung and Freud. His work has been analyzed in terms of a consistent oeuvre that sets forth—in the alternating heroic and mock-heroic terms from which it is inseparable—a vision of man as a ramrod of courage and tenacity, and a squiggle in the margin of the universe. The intuitively American quality of Hawks’ films expresses itself in themes of male-female competition, sexual inversion, and the struggle between adolescence and maturity for a grown man’s soul." - Molly Haskell (Film Comment, 1974)

"Men together and men at work are the subjects of most Hawks films. His "eye-level" method of direction, whereby action is the key, has resulted in the creation of many classics in most genres." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"I don't think plot as a plot means much today. I'd say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven't seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don't worry much about plot anymore." - Howard Hawks (Directing the Film, 1976)

"Front-ranking American director whose films are a tribute to the Hollywood ideal of commercial entertainment. Spanning almost half a century as a film-maker, he has explored every popular genre - Westerns, gangster films, war films, who-dun-its, musicals, crazy comedies and every variety of action adventure. Although he dismisses the suggestion that his films are also art, underlying all his work there is a toughness, tension and honesty particularly in dealing with human relationships. The insolent, hard-crust America he depicts in many guises, is as personal to his viewpoint as John Ford's legendary vision of the West." - Margaret Hinxman (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!" - Howard Hawks