Howard Hawks Robin Wood

Howard Hawks: A Robin Wood Perspective – Deconstructing the Myth of the Auteur

Introduction:

Dive deep into the fascinating and often controversial relationship between the celebrated filmmaker Howard Hawks and the influential film critic Robin Wood. This exploration isn't just about agreeing or disagreeing with Wood's analysis; it's about understanding the critical lens he brought to Hawks's work, the lasting impact of his interpretations, and the ongoing debate they sparked within film studies. We'll examine Wood's key arguments, explore counterpoints, and analyze how Wood's perspective reshaped our understanding of Hawks's cinematic legacy. Prepare for a journey through classic Hollywood, auteur theory, and the enduring power of critical interpretation.


1. Robin Wood and the Auteur Theory: A Foundation for Understanding

Robin Wood, a prominent figure in film criticism, applied the auteur theory – the idea that a director's personal vision dominates a film – to dissect the films of numerous directors. However, his approach wasn't simply celebratory. He engaged critically, exploring the nuances of a filmmaker's work, identifying recurring themes, and analyzing their societal implications. He wasn't afraid to point out flaws or inconsistencies, challenging the often-uncritical reverence surrounding the "auteur." Understanding Wood's framework is crucial for interpreting his views on Howard Hawks. His work emphasized exploring the ideological underpinnings of films, recognizing that seemingly straightforward narratives often concealed complex social and political messages.


2. Howard Hawks: The Master of Genre and the "Invisible" Director

Howard Hawks, a prolific director spanning genres from screwball comedies ( Bringing Up Baby ) to Westerns ( Rio Bravo ), war films ( Sergeant York ), and crime dramas ( The Big Sleep ), is often described as a master craftsman. He valued efficiency and collaboration, preferring a seemingly understated directorial style. This "invisibility" contributed to the enduring debate surrounding his authorship. Many argue that Hawks's films are primarily driven by strong scripts and exceptional performances, rather than a singular directorial vision powerfully imposed upon the material. This makes Wood's assertion of Hawks as a significant auteur all the more interesting and challenging.


3. Wood's Interpretation of Hawks: Beyond the Surface

Robin Wood's writings on Howard Hawks don't simply summarize the plots of his films. Instead, he delves into the director's recurring themes – the complexities of masculinity, the exploration of male camaraderie and competition, the dynamic between men and women, and the often-ambivalent portrayal of American values. Wood highlighted Hawks's fascination with professional competence, individual skill, and the importance of community within his narratives. However, Wood also criticized Hawks for what he saw as a certain conservatism embedded within these seemingly celebratory portrayals. He argued that Hawks's films, despite their surface appeal, often reinforced patriarchal structures and limited representations of female characters.


4. Key Films in Wood's Analysis: A Case Study

Wood's analysis often focused on specific Hawks films, using them to illustrate his broader arguments. For example, Rio Bravo, a Western, is frequently examined for its depiction of male bonding, teamwork, and the subtle tensions within these relationships. Wood might dissect the seemingly straightforward narrative to reveal the complex power dynamics and the underlying anxieties about masculinity present within the film's structure. Similarly, Bringing Up Baby, a screwball comedy, allows for an exploration of gender roles and the subversion – or reinforcement – of traditional expectations within the comedic framework.


5. Counterarguments and Critiques of Wood's Perspective

While Wood's work has been influential, it's not without its critics. Some argue that Wood overemphasizes the ideological aspects of Hawks's films, neglecting the purely aesthetic achievements and the director's masterful storytelling techniques. Others find Wood's interpretations overly pessimistic, overlooking the humor, energy, and sheer entertainment value of Hawks's work. The debate highlights the subjective nature of film criticism and the multiplicity of valid interpretations.


6. The Enduring Legacy: Wood's Impact on Hawks Scholarship

Despite the counterarguments, Robin Wood's work undeniably shaped how we understand Howard Hawks and his films. His critical approach prompted further scholarship, encouraging more nuanced and in-depth analyses that consider both the aesthetic qualities and the underlying ideological messages. Wood's engagement with Hawks’s oeuvre helped to move the conversation beyond simple genre categorization, prompting a deeper understanding of the socio-cultural context of the director’s work.


7. Conclusion: A Reassessment of the Auteur

The interplay between Howard Hawks and Robin Wood exemplifies the ongoing conversation about auteur theory and the complexities of interpreting cinematic works. Wood's insightful – and sometimes controversial – analysis pushed us to look beyond the surface of Hawks's seemingly straightforward narratives, uncovering the deeper social and political meanings embedded within his cinematic universe. The ongoing debate reflects the dynamism of film criticism and the richness and enduring relevance of Howard Hawks's cinematic legacy.


Article Outline:

Title: Howard Hawks: A Robin Wood Perspective – Deconstructing the Myth of the Auteur

Introduction: Hooking the reader and providing an overview.
Chapter 1: Robin Wood and the Auteur Theory.
Chapter 2: Howard Hawks: Master of Genre.
Chapter 3: Wood's Interpretation of Hawks.
Chapter 4: Key Films in Wood's Analysis (Examples: Rio Bravo, Bringing Up Baby, etc.)
Chapter 5: Counterarguments and Critiques.
Chapter 6: Wood's Lasting Impact on Hawks Scholarship.
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Reassessing the Auteur.
FAQs: Addressing common questions about Hawks and Wood's work.
Related Articles: A list of related articles and their brief descriptions.



(The detailed content for each chapter is provided above in the main article.)


FAQs:

1. What is the auteur theory? The auteur theory posits that a film's director is the primary creative force, stamping their personal vision onto the work.

2. Why is Robin Wood's criticism of Howard Hawks significant? Wood's analysis moved beyond surface-level appreciation, examining Hawks's films for ideological underpinnings and societal implications.

3. Did Robin Wood completely reject Howard Hawks's work? No, Wood engaged critically, recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses, the achievements and limitations of Hawks's films.

4. What are some of the recurring themes in Howard Hawks's films, according to Wood? Masculinity, male camaraderie, competition, the dynamics between men and women, and the portrayal of American values.

5. How did Wood's criticism influence subsequent interpretations of Hawks's films? It spurred more nuanced analyses considering both aesthetic qualities and socio-political contexts.

6. What are some counterarguments to Wood's interpretations of Hawks? Critics argue he overemphasized ideology, neglecting aesthetic achievements and entertainment value.

7. What are some of the key films Wood analyzed in relation to Hawks? Rio Bravo, Bringing Up Baby, and others showcasing key themes.

8. Is the auteur theory still relevant today? Yes, while debated, it remains a crucial framework for film analysis, prompting deeper examinations of directorial style and vision.

9. What makes Howard Hawks a significant figure in film history? His mastery of genre, collaborative style, and influence on subsequent filmmakers solidify his place as a Hollywood legend.



Related Articles:

1. Howard Hawks's Westerns: A Genre Deconstruction: An analysis of Hawks's Western films and their unique approach to the genre.
2. Masculinity in the Films of Howard Hawks: An exploration of the various representations of masculinity throughout his career.
3. The Screwball Comedies of Howard Hawks: A Critical Appraisal: A focused look at Hawks's contributions to the screwball comedy genre.
4. Howard Hawks and the American Dream: Examining Hawks's films through the lens of American ideals and aspirations.
5. The Collaboration in Howard Hawks's Films: Exploring the importance of teamwork and collaboration in his filmmaking process.
6. The Female Characters in Howard Hawks's Films: An analysis of the roles and portrayals of women in Hawks’s movies.
7. Comparing Howard Hawks and John Ford: Masters of Genre: A comparative study of two prominent directors of the classic Hollywood era.
8. Robin Wood's Influence on Film Criticism: An overview of Wood's contributions to film studies and his impact on critical thinking.
9. Auteur Theory: A Critical Examination: Exploring the strengths, weaknesses, and lasting relevance of the auteur theory in film analysis.


  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Robin Wood, 2006 A significant and contemporary study of director Howard Hawks by influential film critic Robin Wood, reprinted with a new introduction.
  howard hawks robin wood: Personal Views Robin Wood, 2006 A reissue of a significant and hard-to-find text in film studies with a new introduction and three additional essays included. Robin Wood, the renowned scholarly critic and writer on film, has prepared a new introduction and added three essays to his classic text Personal Views. This important book contains essays on a wide range of films and filmmakers and considers questions of the nature of film criticism and the critic. Wood, the proud unreconstructed humanist, offers in this collection persuasive arguments for the importance of art, creativity, and personal response and also demonstrates these values in his analyses. Personal Views is the only book on cinema by Wood never to have been published in the United States. It contains essays on popular Hollywood directors such as Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli, and Leo McCarey; as well as pieces on recognized auteurs like Max Ophuls, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Josef von Sternberg; and essays on art-film icons Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Kenji Mizoguchi. The writings that make up Personal Views appeared duing a pivotal time in both film studies-during its academic institutionalization-and in the author's life. Throughout this period of change, Wood remained a stalwart anchor of the critical discipline, using theory without being used by it and always staying attentive to textual detail. Wood's overall critical project is to combine aesthetics and ideology in understanding films for the ultimate goal of enriching our lives individually and together. This is a major work to be read and reread not just by film scholars and students of film but by anyone with an interest in twentieth-century culture.
  howard hawks robin wood: Robin Wood on the Horror Film Robin Wood, 2018-11-12 Robin Wood’s writing on the horror film, published over five decades, collected in one volume. Robin Wood—one of the foremost critics of cinema—has laid the groundwork for anyone writing about the horror film in the last half-century. Wood's interest in horror spanned his entire career and was a form of popular cinema to which he devoted unwavering attention. Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews compiles over fifty years of his groundbreaking critiques. In September 1979, Wood and Richard Lippe programmed an extensive series of horror films for the Toronto International Film Festival and edited a companion piece: The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film — the first serious collection of critical writing on the horror genre. Robin Wood on the Horror Film now contains all of Wood's writings from The American Nightmare and nearly everything else he wrote over the years on horror—published in a range of journals and magazines—gathered together for the first time. It begins with the first essay Wood ever published, Psychoanalysis of Psycho, which appeared in 1960 and already anticipated many of the ideas explored later in his touchstone book, Hitchcock's Films. The volume ends, fittingly, with, What Lies Beneath?, written almost five decades later, an essay in which Wood reflects on the state of the horror film and criticism since the genre's renaissance in the 1970s. Wood's prose is eloquent, lucid, and convincing as he brings together his parallel interests in genre, authorship, and ideology. Deftly combining Marxist, Freudian, and feminist theory, Wood's prolonged attention to classic and contemporary horror films explains much about the genre's meanings and cultural functions. Robin Wood on the Horror Film will be an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in horror, science fiction, and film genre.
  howard hawks robin wood: Hitchcock's Films Revisited Robin Wood, 2002 When Hitchcock's Films was first published, it quickly became known as a new kind of book on film and as a necessary text in the growing body of Hitchcock criticism. This revised edition of Hitchcock's Films Revisited includes a substantial new preface in which Wood reveals his personal history as a critic--including his coming out as a gay man, his views on his previous critical work, and how his writings, his love of film, and his personal life and have remained deeply intertwined through the years. This revised edition also includes a new chapter on Marnie.
  howard hawks robin wood: Rio Bravo Robin Wood, 2019-07-25 This volume is a study of the classic western film 'Rio Bravo', which, according to the author, remains 'beyond politics, as an argument as to why we should all want to go on living'.
  howard hawks robin wood: Sexual Politics and Narrative Film Robin Wood, 1998 An examination of the relationship between narrative style and sexual politics. Looking at contemporary films from the USA, Europe and Japan, the book examines the ways in which films relate to sexual politics and the organization within our culture of gender and sexuality.
  howard hawks robin wood: CinemaTexas Notes Louis Black, Collins Swords, 2018-02-26 Austin’s thriving film culture, renowned for international events such as SXSW and the Austin Film Festival, extends back to the early 1970s when students in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin ran a film programming unit that screened movies for students and the public. Dubbed CinemaTexas, the program offered viewers a wide variety of films—old and new, mainstream, classic, and cult—at a time when finding and watching films after their first run was very difficult and prohibitively expensive. For each film, RTF graduate students wrote program notes that included production details, a sampling of critical reactions, and an original essay that placed the film and its director within context and explained the movie’s historical significance. Over time, CinemaTexas Program Notes became more ambitious and were distributed around the world, including to luminaries such as film critic Pauline Kael. This anthology gathers a sampling of CinemaTexas Program Notes, organized into four sections: “USA Film History,” “Hollywood Auteurs,” “Cinema-Fist: Renegade Talents,” and “America’s Shadow Cinema.” Many of the note writers have become prominent film studies scholars, as well as leading figures in the film, TV, music, and video game industries. As a collection, CinemaTexas Notes strongly contradicts the notion of an effortlessly formed American film canon, showing instead how local film cultures—whether in Austin, New York, or Europe—have forwarded the development of film studies as a discipline.
  howard hawks robin wood: Hawks on Hawks Joseph McBride, 2013-12-03 I read Hawks on Hawks with passion. I am very happy that this book exists. -- François Truffaut Howard Hawks (1896--1977) is often credited as being the most versatile of all of the great American directors, having worked with equal ease in screwball comedies, westerns, gangster movies, musicals, and adventure films. He directed an impressive number of Hollywood's greatest stars -- including Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Rosalind Russell, and Marilyn Monroe -- and some of his most celebrated films include Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959). Hawks on Hawks draws on interviews that author Joseph McBride conducted with the director over the course of seven years, giving rare insight into Hawks's artistic philosophy, his relationships with the stars, and his position in an industry that was rapidly changing. In its new edition, this classic book is both an account of the film legend's life and work and a guidebook on how to make movies.
  howard hawks robin wood: A Hitchcock Reader Marshall Deutelbaum, Leland Poague, 2009-02-24 This new edition of A Hitchcock Reader aims to preserve what has been so satisfying and successful in the first edition: a comprehensive anthology that may be used as a critical text in introductory or advanced film courses, while also satisfying Hitchcock scholars by representing the rich variety of critical responses to the director's films over the years. a total of 20 of Hitchcock's films are discussed in depth - many others are considered in passing section introductions by the editors that contextualize the essays and the films they discuss well-researched bibliographic references, which will allow readers to broaden the scope of their study of Alfred Hitchcock
  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Jim Hillier, Peter Wollen, 1996-12 This is an anthology of the best criticism produced about Hawks' films. Among the critics collected together in this book are Andrew Sarris and Robin Wood who go towards demonstrating the coherence and integrity of Hawks' work.
  howard hawks robin wood: Hitchcock's Films Robin Wood, 1969
  howard hawks robin wood: Ingmar Bergman Richard Lippe, Robin Wood, 2012-12-15 An expanded version of Robin Wood's influential study of Ingmar Bergman, including more recent essays on the director. At a time when few reviewers and critics were taking the study of film seriously, Robin Wood released a careful and thoroughly cinematic commentary on Ingmar Bergman's films that demonstrated the potential of film analysis in a nascent scholarly field. The original Ingmar Bergman influenced a generation of film scholars and cineastes after its publication in 1969 and remains one of the most important volumes on the director. This new edition of Ingmar Bergman, edited by film scholar Barry Keith Grant, contains all of Wood's original text plus four later pieces on the director by Wood that were intended for a new volume that was not completed before Wood's death in 2010. In analyzing a selection of Bergman's films, Wood makes a compelling case for the logic of the filmmaker's development while still respecting and indicating the distinctiveness of his individual films. Wood's emphasis on questions of value (What makes a work important? How does it address our lives?) informed his entire career and serve as the basis for many of these chapters. In the added material for this new edition, Wood considers three important films Bergman made after the book was first published-Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander, and From the Life of the Marionettes-and also includes significant reassessment of Persona. These pieces provocatively suggest the more political directions Wood might have taken had he been able to produce Ingmar Bergman Revisited, as he had planned to do before his death. In its day, Ingmar Bergman was one of the most important volumes on the Swedish director published in English, and it remains compelling today despite the multitude of books to appear on the director since. Film scholars and fans of Bergman's work will enjoy this updated volume.
  howard hawks robin wood: Film Dialogue Jeff Jaeckle, 2013-07-09 Film Dialogue is the first anthology in film studies devoted to the topic of language in cinema, bringing together leading and emerging scholars to discuss the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological dimensions of film speech that have largely gone unappreciated and unheard. Consisting of thirteen essays divided into three sections: genre, auteur theory, and cultural representation, Film Dialogue revisits and reconfigures several of the most established topics in film studies in an effort to persuade readers that spectators are more accurately described as audiences, that the gaze has its equal in eavesdropping, and that images are best understood and appreciated through their interactions with words. Including an introduction that outlines a methodology of film dialogue study and adopting an accessible prose style throughout, Film Dialogue is a welcome addition to ongoing debates about the place, value, and purpose of language in cinema.
  howard hawks robin wood: The Apu Trilogy Robin Wood, 2016-10-03 Film critic Robin Wood offers a persuasive detailed reading of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, widely regarded as landmarks of world cinema. The Apu Trilogy, written by influential film critic Robin Wood, is republished today for a contemporary audience. Focusing on the famed trilogy from Indian director Satyajit Ray, Wood persuasively demonstrates his ability at detailed textual analysis, providing an impressively sustained reading that elucidates the complex view of life in the trilogy. Wood was one of our most insightful and committed film critics, championing films that explore the human condition. His analysis of The Apu Trilogy reveals and illuminates the films’ profoundly humanistic qualities with clarity and rigor, plumbing the psychological and emotional resonances that arise from Satyajit Ray’s delicate balance of performance, camerawork, and visual design. Wood was the first English-language critic to write substantively about Ray’s films, which made the original publication of his monograph on The Apu Trilogy unprecedented as well as impressive. Of late there has been a renewed interest in North America in the work of Ray, yet no other critic has come close to equaling the scope and depth of Wood's analysis. In his introduction, originally published in 1971, Wood says reactions to Ray’s work were met with indifference. In response, he offers possible reasons why this occurred, including social and cultural differences and the films’ slow pacing, which contemporary critics tended to associate with classical cinema. Wood notes Ray’s admiration for Western film culture, including the Hollywood cinema and European directors, particularly Jean Renoir and his realist films. Assigning a chapter to each Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito, (1957), and The World of Apu, (1959), Wood goes on to explore each film more thoroughly. One of the aspects of this book that is particularly rewarding is Wood’s analytical approach to the trilogy as a whole, as well as detailed attention given to each of the three films. The book, with a new preface by Richard Lippe and foreword by Barry Keith Grant, functions as a master class on what constitutes an in-depth reading of a work and the use of critical tools that are relevant to such a task. Robin Wood’s The Apu Trilogy offers an excellent account of evaluative criticism that will appeal to film scholars and students alike.
  howard hawks robin wood: An Auteurist History of Film Charles Silver, 2016 From 2009 to 2014, The Museum of Modern Art presented a weekly series of film screenings titled An Auteurist History of Film. Inspired by Andrew Sarris's seminal book The American Cinema, which elaborated on the auteur theory first developed by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s, the series presented works from MoMA's expansive film collection, with a particular focus on the role of the director as artistic author. Film curator Charles Silver wrote a blog post to accompany each screening, describing the place of each film in the oeuvre of is director as well as the work's significance in cinema history. Following the end of the series' five-year run, the Museum collected these texts for publication, and is now bringing together Silver's insightful and often humorous readings in a single volume. This publication is an invaluable guide to key directors and movies as well as an excellent introduction to auteur theory. -- from back cover.
  howard hawks robin wood: A Handbook of Media and Communication Research Klaus Bruhn Jensen, 2013-04-15 This handbook covers perspectives from both the social sciences and the humanities. It provides guidelines for how to think about, plan, and carry out studies of media in different social and cultural contexts.
  howard hawks robin wood: Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan-- and Beyond Robin Wood, 2003 This new edition includes all the chapters of the original work, supplemented with analysis of comedy films of the 1990s, a chapter on contemporary filmmakers, including David Fincher & Jim Jarmusch, & an essay on 'Day of the Dead'
  howard hawks robin wood: Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood , 1911 Twelve selected adventures of Robin Hood and his outlaw band who stole from the rich to give to the poor.
  howard hawks robin wood: Theories of Authorship John Caughie, 2013-10-08 The film director or `auteur' has been central in film theory and criticism over the past thirty years. Theories of Authorship documents the major stages in the debate about film authorship, and introduces recent writing on film to suggest important ways in which the debate might be reconsidered.
  howard hawks robin wood: Recreational Terror Isabel Cristina Pinedo, 2016-02-24 In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.
  howard hawks robin wood: Brokeback Mountain Gary Needham, 2010-03-31 This text examines 'Brokeback Mountain' in relation to the genres of the western and melodrama.
  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Todd McCarthy, 2007-12-01 The first major biography of one of Old Hollywood’s greatest directors. Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Howard Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks’s greatest creation may have been himself. As The Atlantic Monthly noted, “Todd McCarthy. . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work.” “A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed.” —The New York Times Book Review “Hawks’s life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy’s wise and funny Howard Hawks.” —The Wall Street Journal “Excellent. . . . A respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood’s most versatile director.” —Newsweek
  howard hawks robin wood: Robin Wood on the Horror Film Robin Wood, 2018 Robin Wood's writing on the horror film, published over five decades, collected in one volume.
  howard hawks robin wood: People Will Talk John Kobal, 1985 Some of the stars interviewed are LGBT: Brooks, Hepburn, Lupino, Stanwyck, Bankhead, Hurrell, Hermes Pan.
  howard hawks robin wood: Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia Jonathan Rosenbaum, Adrian Martin, 2003-12-02 In contrast to any talk of the death of the cinema, this title pronounces the art form alive and well, and still developing in new and unforeseen directions. Using transnational discussions and debates, it shows why the idea of cinephilia is just as relevant today as it ever was.
  howard hawks robin wood: Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System Thomas Schatz, 1981-02 The central thesis of this book is that a genre approach provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing and appreciating the Hollywood cinema. Taking into account not only the formal and aesthetic aspects of feature filmmaking, but various other cultural aspects as well, the genre approach treats movie production as a dynamic process of exchange between the film industry and its audience. This process, embodied by the Hollywood studio system, has been sustained primarily through genres, those popular narrative formulas like the Western, musical and gangster film, which have dominated the screen arts throughout this century.
  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Howard Hawks, 2006 Interviews with the director of Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Bringing Up Baby, The Big Sleep, Red River, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Rio Bravo
  howard hawks robin wood: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior David Allen Sibley, 2009 Provides basic information about the biology, life cycles, and behavior of birds, along with brief profiles of each of the eighty bird families in North America.
  howard hawks robin wood: Riccardo Freda Roberto Curti, 2017-03-21 In an eclectic career spanning four decades, Italian director Riccardo Freda (1909-1999) produced films of remarkable technical skill and powerful visual style, including the swashbuckler Black Eagle (1946), an adaptation of Les Miserables (1947), the peplum Theodora, Slave Empress (1954) and a number of cult-favorite Gothic and horror films such as I Vampiri (1957), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963). Freda was first championed in the 1960s by French critics who labeled him the European Raoul Walsh, and enjoyed growing critical esteem over the years. This book covers his life and career for the first time in English, with detailed analyses of his films and exclusive interviews with his collaborators and family.
  howard hawks robin wood: Representing the Woman Elizabeth Cowie, 1997-01-01
  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Ian Brookes, 2019-07-25 Leading international scholars consider the films and legacy of Howard Hawks. Diverse contributions consider Hawks' work in relation to issues of gender, genre and relationships between the sexes, discuss key films including Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep and Red River, and address Hawks' visual style and the importance of musicality in his film-making.
  howard hawks robin wood: Open Season C. J. Box, 2002-05-07 Don't miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+ The first novel in the thrilling series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box. Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the outfitter murders, as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police. As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
  howard hawks robin wood: Signs and Meaning in the Cinema Peter Wollen, 1972 Without doubt, it is the best study of cinema published in English for years. --Cinema ... a major achievement... drawing on the results of aesthetic inquiry--from Shaftesbury and Lessing to Jakobson and the formalists--in order to relate the cinema to wider areas of linguistic theory and theory of art. --Times Literary Supplement
  howard hawks robin wood: 100 Best Films of the Century Barry Norman, 1998 Barry Norman is Britain's best known film critic. This is his personal choice of the ' best ever' films. This is a new revised edition Barry Norman's personal selection of his best 100 films of the century. As he says in his intro ' There is 1 thing of which I am quite sure: you will not agree with all o it. You will agree with some of it; there are films included which would undoubtedly be on everybody's list but equally there are several, maybe many, which would appeae on any but mine...' Each of his hundred films are reviewed in his inimitable style: Witty, incisive, controversial. Accompanying the reviews are the main film credits, running times, Oscar nominations and awards, and video availability. In addition to his selection, Barry Norman has written a perceptive brief history of the cinema: My purpose being to pick out the most sinificant developments and thereby give some kind of context to my choice of the best 100 films of this century. This new hardback edition has been completely updated and revised with colour photographs, where appropriate , throughout.
  howard hawks robin wood: The Conversations Michael Ondaatje, 2012-12-03 During the filming of his celebrated novel THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Michael Ondaatje became increasingly fascinated as he watched the veteran editor Walter Murch at work. THE CONVERSATIONS, which grew out of discussions between the two men, is about the craft of filmmaking and deals with every aspect of film, from the first stage of script writing to the final stage of the sound mix. Walter Murch emerged during the 1960s at the centre of a renaissance of American filmmakers which included the directors Francis Coppola, George Lucas and Fred Zinneman. He worked on a whole raft of great films including the three GODFATHER films, JULIA, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and many others. Articulate, intellectual, humorous and passionate about his craft and its devices, Murch brings his vast experience and penetrating insights to bear as he explains how films are made, how they work, how they go wrong and how they can be saved. His experience on APOCALYPSE NOW - both originally and more recently when the film was completely re-cut - and his work with Anthony Minghella on THE ENGLISH PATIENT provide illuminating highlights.
  howard hawks robin wood: Film As Film V. F. Perkins, 1993-08-22 Here at last is an introduction to film theory and its history without the jargon. Noted film scholar V. F. Perkins presents criteria for expanding our understanding and enjoyment of movies. He employs common sense words like balance, coherence, significance, and satisfaction to develop his insightful support of the subtle approach and of the unobtrusive director. Readers will learn why a scene from the humbler movie Carmen Jones is a deeper realization of filmmaking than the bravura lion sequence in the classic Battleship Potemkin. Along the way Perkins invites readers to re-experience with clarity, directness, and simplicity other famous scenes by directors like Hitchcock, Eisenstein, and Chaplin. Perkins examines the origins of movies and embraces their use of both realism and magic, their ability to record as well as to create. In the process he seeks to discover the synthesis between these opposing elements. With the delight of the fan and the perception of the critic, Perkins advances a film theory, based on the work of Bazin and other early film theorists, that is rich with suggestion for debate and further pursuit. Sit beside Perkins as he reacquaints you with cinema, heightens your awareness, deepens your pleasure, and increases your return every time you invest in a movie ticket.
  howard hawks robin wood: V. F. Perkins on Movies Douglas Pye, 2020-09 The collected shorter film criticism of one of the most brilliant English-language film critics.
  howard hawks robin wood: The B Word Maria San Filippo, 2013-04-12 Often disguised in public discourse by terms like gay, homoerotic, homosocial, or queer, bisexuality is strangely absent from queer studies and virtually untreated in film and media criticism. Maria San Filippo aims to explore the central role bisexuality plays in contemporary screen culture, establishing its importance in representation, marketing, and spectatorship. By examining a variety of media genres including art cinema, sexploitation cinema and vampire films, bromances, and series television, San Filippo discovers missed moments where bisexual readings of these texts reveal a more malleable notion of subjectivity and eroticism. San Filippo's work moves beyond the subject of heteronormativity and responds to compulsory monosexuality, where it's not necessarily a couple's gender that is at issue, but rather that an individual chooses one or the other. The B Word transcends dominant relational formation (gay, straight, or otherwise) and brings a discursive voice to the field of queer and film studies.
  howard hawks robin wood: Howard Hawks Gregory Camp, 2020-04-08 Known for creating classic films including His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks is one of the best-known Hollywood ‘auteurs’, but the important role that music plays in his films has been generally neglected by film critics and scholars. In this concise study, Gregory Camp demonstrates how Hawks' use of music and musical treatment of dialogue articulate the group communication that is central to his films. In five chapters, Camp explores how the notion of 'music' in Hawks' films can be expanded beyond the film score, and the techniques by which Hawks and his collaborators (including actors, screenwriters, composers, and editors) achieve this heightened musicality.
  howard hawks robin wood: Fun in a Chinese Laundry Josef Von Sternberg, 1966 Josef von Sternberg was born in Vienna in 1894, went to America as a penniless immigrant, and directed his first motion picture in 1924. It was hailed as a work of genius, and he followed it with some of the most striking films of the end of the silent era. With the talkies began his long association with Marlene Dietrich. He was the terror of the Hollywood stage, driving his team to a frenzy in his demands for perfection. He also shaped the new medium in several decisive ways. In this book he is not merely reminiscing; in a series of key chapters he sets out his views on the nature of the cinema and of direction.