Red Line 7000 (1965)

Red Line 7000 is late Howard Hawks film. Made in 1965, it was his third-last movie. It’s probably his least admired movie.

Hawks wrote the original story and he produced and directed. Red Line 7000 deals with motor racing, but not with the glamorous world of Le Man or Formula 1. This is the slightly more disreputable world of NASCAR racing. This is certainly a deliberate choice by Hawks. He’s not interested in the glamour. He’s interested in what makes these men tick.

Hawks was fascinated by the idea of exploring the psychology of men who dice with death. He was particularly fascinated by men who dice with death even though they don’t have to. Not soldiers in wartime or cops driven by a sense of duty, but civilians who deliberately make this choice. They’re not doing it for a cause. They’re not doing it for the excitement. It’s more of an existential thing. They’re flirting with death, taunting death, spitting in the eyes of death. And all the time knowing that death will have the last laugh. Maybe they’re half in love with death.

Hawks was also fascinated by the women who love these men.

So the basic setup is there for a classic Howard Hawks movie. But that doesn’t seem to be what he had in mind. It seems like he was trying to make a movie aimed at a young audience. In fact it’s almost as if he tried to make a drive-in movie. There are some very definite exploitation movie elements. You have never seen so many car crashes. Every time the action moves to the racetrack you can be sure there will be crashes. Multiple crashes. Cars in flames. Cars going end over end.

This is the sort of thing a drive-in audience would love. But this was a major-studio picture distributed by Paramount and there was no way that Paramount would have had a clue how to market it.

It needed a Roger Corman to market it. It’s a movie that should have been made by AIP. Red Line 7000 was in fact shot on a very low budget. Mainstream critics were always going to hate it, and they did. Mainstream audiences would have been perplexed. Where are the big stars?

Which brings us to the cast. Hawks went for an entire cast of unknowns. The only big name is James Caan, but in 1965 he was not yet a star. Hawks presumably wanted to avoid having the movie loaded down with stars, which would have created the expectation that this was going to be a star vehicle for one or two big names. It isn’t. There’s no central character. There are eight or so important characters but the focus shifts constantly between them.

There are three drivers. Mike Marsh (James Caan) is the ice-cold professional who cares about nothing other than racing. Dan McCall (Skip Ward) had tried to break into Formula but now he’s back to NASCAR racing. Ned Arp (John Robert Crawford) is the hotshot punk, a nobody determined to be a somebody.

The first of the women is Julie (Laura Devon), the sister of the manager of the racing team. She falls for Ned Arp. The second is French girl Gabrielle (Marianna Hill). She had been Dan’s girlfriend but they’ve split up and now she has set her sights on Mike Marsh. The third is Holly (Gail Hire), who keeps falling in love with racing car drivers who keep dying on her. Now, to her horror, she has fallen in love with yet another race car driver (Dan).

The focus shifts constantly between each of the three couples and between the romantic dramas and the dramas on the racetrack.

Hawks sent his second unit director Bruce Kessler out to film actual race footage so all the racing scenes are real. And they’re spectacular.

The acting is a very mixed bag.

This movie ran into huge censorship problems over the relationship between Julie and Ned, something that now seems bizarre and inexplicable. Major cuts were made.

Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan of this movie which doesn’t surprise me. I dislike Tarantino’s own movies but as a critic he’s perceptive and stimulating. He has, rightly, championed a lot of movies from the 60s and 70s that critics at that time were incapable of understanding.

Red Line 7000 is not quite what either Howard Hawks fans or mainstream audiences and critics expected but has its own oddball charm. I’m going to give it a highly recommended rating.

I’ve reviewed other Hawks movie dealing with similar themes. The Crowd Roars (1932) and Ceiling Zero (1936) are both underrated and very much worth seeing.

The Last Flight (1931)

The Last Flight, released by First National Pictures in 1931, is a fascinating pre-code exercise in post-war angst and existential despair.

It was written by John Monk Saunders, whose writing credits encompass most of the classic World War I aviation movies of the 20s and 30s including Wings (1927) and the original 1930 version of The Dawn Patrol. He had been an army flight instructor during the war. His job was to teach men to kill, and die, in the air. It had an effect. Saunders committed suicide in 1940 at the age of forty-five.

The Last Flight begins with two buddies, Lieutenants Cary Lockwood (Richard Barthelmess) and Shep Lambert (David Manners), in the midst of their final dogfight over France in 1918. They survive the crash of their plane.

They are among the lucky ones who returned from the war alive. Or are they lucky? When you send young men off to war, even if they come back alive they haven’t really survived. Cary and Shep are all broken inside. Not physically, but mentally and spiritually and emotionally. They are the walking dead.

They head to Paris when peace comes. They only know how to fly and to kill, not useful peacetime skills. And they can’t fly any more. Their nerves are shattered. There is however one thing they can do. They can drink. They decide to devote their lives to drinking.

There’s lots of Lost Generation stuff in this movie. This was 1931. The new American literary superstars were writers like Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, chroniclers of that Lost Generation.

Cary and Shep hang around with other American WW1 vets, all of them broken in some way by the war and all living lives devoted to empty despairing hedonism.

Then they meet a very strange girl. Her name is Nikki (Helen Chandler). To say that she’s eccentric would be putting it mildly. She’s totally mad. She’s also charming, pretty, likeable and weirdly fascinating. Soon she is surrounded by half a dozen drunken admirers, all broken-down ex-flyers. She recognises flyers immediately. They have a certain look in their eyes. She doesn’t actually say this but I think it’s fair to surmise that she can see in their eyes that they have looked upon the face of death.

There’s more than a tinge of existentialism. These young men, and this young woman, have freedom but they have no idea what to do with it. They have their pleasures, but their pleasures leave them feeling empty. The war has destroyed their faith in the old values. They have found no new values in which to believe. Being drunk makes them cheerful, but it’s a despairing kind of forced cheerfulness. They’re going nowhere and they’re in a hurry.

In this very year, 1931, David Manners and Helen Chandler would be paired in a much more famous movie, Dracula. Considering how dull they were in Dracula their performances in The Last Flight come as quite a surprise. David Manners is quite good. Helen Chandler’s performance is bizarre but it’s bizarre in just the right way and it works perfectly. Nikki is a Lost Girl. Like the men she just drifts through life without actually living.

Richard Barthelmess was, briefly, a very big star. He’s very good here. All the performances are nicely judged, with the right amount of disconnectedness.

What makes this a pre-code movie is not the sexual content (there is very little to speak of) but its cynicism about military glory and the military in general, and its overall pessimism. I don’t think the Production Code Authority would have tolerated such a negative view of the military.

The plot takes some very unexpected turns towards the end. There are events that come out of the blue, but given the way these people live you can’t help feeling that something like this was bound to happen. I like the way the shocks are not foreshadowed.

The Last Flight is one of the more successful attempts to capture existentialism on film. It’s a fascinating movie and because it’s a pre-code movie it’s pleasingly unpredictable. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very good transfer. It’s barebones. That’s perhaps a pity since this movie is probably easier to appreciate if you know a bit about the intellectual currents of the time.

Hatari! (1962)

Hatari! is a lavish 1962 comedy adventure romp from Howard Hawks. The basic idea was, for 1962, rather clever. How do you get all the thrills and danger of big game hunting without having any animals killed? Simple. You make a movie about a group of men catching wild animals for zoos. It’s actually even more dangerous and exciting and it provides perfect family entertainment.

Hatari! is epic in scale with lots of location shooting and some very exciting action sequences. It was filmed in what is now Tanzania, and was naturally shot in widescreen and in Technicolor. If that wasn’t enough to attract audiences then for good measure it had John Wayne as its star. With those ingredients it couldn’t miss, and it didn’t, being a very major hit in 1962.



The setup is a rather classic Hawksian one. You have a group of men more or less cut off from the outside world, facing danger and death. That was the classic Hawksian drama formula. Since this one is played mainly as comedy the danger and death elements are downplayed somewhat but the opening sequence, in which one member of the team is badly gored by a rhinoceros, serves to remind us that the dangers are very real. The element of danger is the crucial ingredient for the sorts of camaraderie and group dynamics that always fascinated Hawks.

Sean Mercer (John Wayne) leads the group. They are currently collecting animals, mostly for a zoo in Switzerland. The Swiss zoo has decided it would be a swell idea to send out a photographer to document the expedition. Only they neglected to mention that the photographer they were sending is young, attractive and very female. The arrival of Anna Maria D'Allesandro (soon to become known as Dallas, and played by Elsa Martinelli) is somewhat disconcerting to Sean Mercer. Not that he has anything against women, but he was badly hurt by a woman in the past and now he’s somewhat gun-shy where the opposite sex is concerned. He’s especially gun-shy where members of the opposite sex to whom he is attracted are concerned, and he’s certainly attracted to Dallas.



Dallas is not the only woman Sean has to contend with. The animal-collecting outfit is actually owned by Brandy de la Court (Michèle Girardon). Her father had been a famous animal collector until he was killed trying to catch a rhino. His young daughter Brandy was more or less adopted by the survivors but now she’s not so young any more. Now she’s a very attractive young woman of eighteen and that’s going to cause more romantic complications, especially when a young Frenchman joins the team. He notices her charms at once, and that brings her charms to the notice of the team’s ace driver, Kurt Muller (Hardy Krüger). But this is not just a romantic triangle, it becomes a romantic quadrangle when yet a third member of the team decides he’s in love with Brandy.

Sean has his own problems. Like figuring out what to do about Dallas. He knows he’s in love with her but he has no idea how to tell her. Dallas meanwhile has been collecting baby elephants. Lots of baby elephants. They just keep turning up the camp and they all decide that she’s the ideal mother for a baby elephant. Sean also has to worry about the latest project of Pockets (Red Buttons). Pockets fancies himself as an inventor and he’s come up with a brilliant idea for catching monkeys. It’s the fact that his idea involves large amounts of gunpowder that has Sean worried.



This is, at 157 minutes, a rather long movie. But it doesn’t really seem long at all. The animal-catching action sequences, involving high-speed chases in cars and trucks, are nicely interspersed with the more romantic and comedic scenes. The whole thing is quite well balanced. Some process shots are used in the action scenes but they’re very well done and it’s obvious that most of these scenes are pretty much done for real. They’re a good deal more exciting than most of the CGI-laden dreck that currently infests movie screens. Hawks knew how to do action. With spectacular scenery as a backdrop this movie scores highly on visual impressiveness.

Hawks’ ability to handle action, romance and comedy with equal dexterity stand him in good stead and despite the film’s length he is never in the slightest danger of losing control.



The strong cast certainly helps. John Wayne’s easy-going likeable performance anchors the movie. Red Buttons could be an irritating actor but Hawks knows how to use his comic skills to best advantage and his performance works quite well. Hardy Krüger is equally likeable and is the ideal young gun to Wayne’s experienced old-timer. The only puzzling thing is that with the young and hunky Krüger around the two women seem determined to overlook his obvious charms and instead fall in love with the old-timers! Elsa Martinelli and Michèle Girardon are both delightful.

The barebones Region 4 DVD provides an anamorphic transfer but the picture is inclined to be a little soft and at times the colour balance seems just a little off.



Hatari! is a remarkably good-natured movie that provides action, romance and comedy. It ends with an inspired extended comedic sequence that is almost pure screwball comedy, hardly surprising since nobody ever did screwball comedy better than Howard Hawks. This is family entertainment that actually will entertain the whole family. It’s impossible not to like this movie. Highly recommended.

Ceiling Zero (1936)

My twin cinematic obsessions at the moment are aviation movies and Howard Hawks movies, which works out rather well since nobody did aviation movies better than Hawks. Ceiling Zero, made for Warner Brothers in 1936, seems to be regarded as one of the director’s lesser efforts. In fact it’s classic Hawks all the way and it really is a terrific movie.

Hawks’ first flying picture was The Dawn Patrol in 1930, a fine movie but it’s obvious that Hawks’ characteristic approach to film-making hadn’t yet quite coalesced. By the time he made Ceiling Zero six years later his mature style was fully formed and with such ideal subject matter he could hardly miss. And he doesn’t.

Federal Air Lines runs passenger, freight and air mail services out of Newark Airport. When it comes to passenger flights safety is the prime consideration but with the air mail it’s a different story. The mail flights take off regardless of weather conditions, even with zero visibility, the pilots flying on instruments and guided in to land by radio beacons.

Jake Lee (Pat O’Brien) runs the show. He has to answer to the airline’s owners but when it comes to day-to-day operations and hiring and firing of pilots he calls the shots. Nobody is very pleased when he hires his old First World War flying buddy Dizzy Davis (James Cagney). Dizzy had worked for the airline before and his reputation precedes him. It is a reputation for irresponsibility, selfishness, womanising, boozing and superb flying.

On arrival Dizzy behaves exactly as his reputation would suggest. Trouble starts to brew when he sets his sights on beautiful 19-year-old Tommy Thomas (June Travis), who has just made her first solo flight. Tommy is clearly an ideal match for a Hawksian hero, a spirited woman who shares the hero’s love for adventure and can trade wisecracks with the best of them. The problem is that another pilot, Lawson, is already in love with her and wedding bells are already in the offing. That’s a minor problem as far as Dizzy Davis is concerned. He can outfly any other pilot and he can win any other man’s woman.

Dizzy’s pursuit of Tommy will have fateful consequences. In order to make a date with her he swaps flights with one of the airline’s most experienced pilots, Texas Clarke (Stuart Erwin). The weather closes in and Texas finds himself making the flight in almost impossible weather conditions - ceiling zero, visibility zero and impenetrable fog. Texas is a fine pilot and in normal circumstances could cope even with conditions such as these but when his radio gives out on him he’s in real trouble. Without a radio his only chance of landing is to find a gap in the cloud cover, an outside chance at best. Dizzy knows that it was his selfishness that put Texas in this jam. Everyone else knows it too but they also know that it’s the luck of the game.

This movie divides neatly in half. The first half is zinging wise-cracking comedy in fine Hawksian fashion, a kind of dry run for His Girl Friday. Then, as it becomes obvious that Texas is in real trouble, the mood darkens and the movie switches to nail-biting tension. If the first half prefigures His Girl Friday then the second half clearly anticipates Hawks’ 1939 aviation masterpiece Only Angel Have Wings.

Hawks’ trademark rapid-fire overlapping dialogue is used to superb effect in both halves of the movie, providing sparkling comedy at first and then serving to ratchet up the tension as everyone’s nerves start to fray.

The classic Hawksian theme of men sharing danger and facing down death is very much in evidence. This theme was already in evidence in The Dawn Patrol but in Ceiling Zero it becomes even more Hawksian with the addition of strong very Hawksian female characters.

The criticism usually directed at this movie is that it is very stagey (and it was in fact adapted from a stage play). That criticism betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the director’s approach to material like this. Hawks also liked to have his group of men facing danger of death cut off from the outside world. Having the action almost entirely taking place indoors, and almost entirely in a single room (apart from scenes of the flyers in the their cockpits where they are also cut off from the outside world), suits Hawks very well. It gives the movie the kind of claustrophobic isolated feel that he used so successfully in movies like Only Angel Have Wings and Rio Bravo (and The Dawn Patrol). This movie is very dialogue-heavy but the dialogue is always crucial in a Hawks film and in this movie it’s exceptionally important. Maybe a reliance on dialogue isn’t very cinematic in a purist sense but Hawks couldn’t have cared less. He wanted to make movies that worked and this one works very well indeed.

The acting certainly helps. This was one of James Cagney’s favourite movies and he’s in spectacular form. He’s in overdrive for the whole movie but that doesn’t prevent from revealing his character’s emotional depths. Cagney might be bouncing off the walls but he knows what he’s doing; he’s in complete control of his performance. Pat O’Brien provides the perfect foil. And as in any great Hawks movie the individual performances are important but more important still is the way the performances intermesh. In Ceiling Zero all the actors deliver on both counts.

The supporting characters are as strong as the leads. Stuart Erwin is delightful. Even quite minor characters such as Texas’s wife Lou (Isabel Jewell) are strongly delineated and complex. June Travis makes a fine Hawksian woman, strong in herself but equally strong in her willingness to support her man.

One outstanding characteristic of the Hawks action movie is the lack of villains. Hawks had virtually no interest in villains. Even in The Dawn Patrol there are no villains - the Germans are as brave and honourable as the British flyers. There is even a strong bond between them since both are actually facing the same enemy, the enemy being death. It was entirely logical that Hawks’ next two aviation movies should have peacetime settings. The battle against death and danger has no need for human enemies at all.

For an action movie Ceiling Zero has surprisingly little action. There is really only one major action set-piece, although it happens to be a very good one. The action itself is not all that important. The focus (as in The Dawn Patrol) is not on what happens in the air, it is on what happens to those on the ground waiting helplessly for the flyers to return. In spite of having relatively little action there is not a dull moment in the film, a point that some modern directors would be ell advised to take note of.

The only currently available edition of this movie is the French DVD release. The good news is that it is the original English-language version with removable French subtitles, and it’s a very good transfer.

Perhaps Ceiling Zero is not quite as good as Only Angel Have Wings, but it’s not that far behind. It’s absolutely essential viewing for admirers of Howard Hawks. It marks the arrival of the classic full-blown Howard Hawks style. The magnificent performance by James Cagney makes it a must-see movie. Very highly recommended.

The Dawn Patrol (1930)

The original 1930 version of The Dawn Patrol is one of those movies that has been almost completely overshadowed by its remake. The 1938 version (with the same title) starring Errol Flynn will be familiar to most classic movie fans while the 1930 version has been lost in obscurity. This is a great pity since the original is not only a Howard Hawks film, it’s also a fascinating glimpse of Hawks the film-maker at a stage in his career when he had not quite perfected his mature style but he was getting pretty close to it. The themes that would obsess Hawks are already apparent, and we can see in embryo the ways in which he would tackle those themes again and again.

It is late 1915 the 59th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps has been taking a pounding. Their commander, Major Brand (Neil Hamilton), finds himself having to send inexperienced  young pilots straight into the thick of the fighting and inevitably many do not survive even their first mission. The stress is made worse for Major Brand since he himself, as the commanding officer, cannot fly combat missions. As a result he feels like an executioner sending men to their deaths.

Major Brand clashes repeatedly with his subordinate Captain Courtney (Richard Barthelmess). Supposedly there has been bad blood between them since an incident involving a woman in Paris, but as the kindly old squadron adjutant points out to one of the pilots the reality is that they are very close friends. They simply find it easier to deal with a difficult situation by blowing off steam at each other. This is a theme that will be echoed later in the movie, one of the many example’s of the movie’s interesting cyclical structure.

The squadron’s two veteran pilots are Captain Courtney and Lieutenant Scott (Douglas Fairbanks Jr). Their job is to keep the green pilots alive while also carrying out their missions.

The war progresses and Major Brand is promoted to a headquarters job. Captain Courtney, who has always been derisive of desk-bound officers who send men into combat, now finds himself playing exactly that role.

The cyclical structure is the key to the movie. Crucial scenes are played out in exactly the same way on three separate occasions, each time with different characters, and each time with even greater emotional impact. A simplistic interpretation would be that this is a commentary on the futility of war but that would be quite uncharacteristic of Hawks, and in any case the film itself makes it fairly clear that this is not the intention. In fact the intention is to emphasise that danger and death are always the enemies and they are always with us. The movie is very sympathetic to the Germans who are portrayed as honourable and heroic foes and this is another indication that the enemy is not the soldier on the opposing side, the enemy is death itself. In one scene a captured German flyer is brought in. He is immediately asked if he would like a drink and he is soon carousing merrily with the British flyers. He is not an enemy; he is a comrade since he faces the same dangers the British pilots face and he faces those dangers with the same courage and cheerfulness.

Hawks was always fascinated by the behaviour of men confronted with the imminent danger of violent death. He was fascinated not just by the way men dealt with this situation, but the ways in which groups of men dealt with it. This early Hawks movie offers us the kind of setup he would use again and again. As in his later masterpiece Only Angel Have Wings the men of the 59th Squadron in The Dawn Patrol seem strangely isolated. We never see the superior officers who issue the orders to the squadron’s commander. We get only brief glimpses of events elsewhere. Virtually the entire movie takes place in the squadron’s commander’s office, the squadron’s recreation room, and in the air. By effectively cutting this group of men off from the outside world Hawks is able to focus on the men themselves and the way to relate to each other.

The men of the 59th Squadron have learnt, in classic Hawksian style, that the only way to face death is to laugh in his face. It might be sheer bravado but it works.

This movie suffers from many of the typical weaknesses of very early talkies. It’s slightly clunky in places and the supporting players in particular overact in silent movie style. This was also one of Hawks’ first talkies and his comparative inexperience shows at times. This gives the movie a rather ragged and raw feel that actually works in its favour. Hawks would later learn to tackle similar themes in a more polished manner but what matters is that the emotional impact is there.

The flying scenes were good enough to be re-used in the 1938 remake. The Hawks signature is apparent here as well. What matters to Hawks is not the action but the way men react to it and on several occasions Hawks simply shows the aircraft of “A” Flight taking off then cuts immediately to the squadron commander waiting anxiously at his desk for the sound of the returning aircraft. We don’t need to see the fighting; it is the emotional cost that matters. When the aerial fighting scenes are shown they are spectacular enough however and they stand up very well indeed today.

Richard Barthelmess gives a brooding low-key performance that captures the spirit of the dogged and indomitable Hawksian hero perfectly. Douglas Fairbanks Jr is somewhat histrionic but he gets way with it. We accept that a man in his position might well find that being slightly histrionic is the best way to deal with his situation.

The print used on the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD release is far from perfect but its flaws are nowhere near serious enough to detract from the enjoyment of the movie.

Without taking anything away from the 1938 remake this 1930 Hawks’ version ofThe Dawn Patrol has more emotional punch and is overall the better movie. Highly recommended.

Monkey Business (1952)

The screwball comedy genre was more or less played out by the early 40s but Howard Hawks never really gave up on the genre. He made two attempts to revive it, the first being Monkey Business in 1952, the second being the excellent and criminally underrated Man’s Favorite Sport? in 1964. It is with the first of these that we are concerned today. In Monkey Business brilliant but absent-minded chemist Dr Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) is trying to find a formula that will eliminate some of the symptoms of ageing. He doesn’t succeed but one of the chimpanzees he’s using in his experiments finds the formula by accident. The chimpanzee puts the mixture into the water cooler. Barnaby drinks it and the middle-aged scientist finds himself thinking he’s thirty years younger. He buys an MG sports car and has a bit of an adventure with his boss’s luscious but ditzy secretary Miss Laurel (Marilyn Monroe). His wife Edwina (Ginger Rogers) is the next to inadvertently sample the formula. She becomes an amorous teenager and wants to relive their honeymoon, which has unfortunate results for poor Barnaby. Even more mayhem ensues when they both take a larger dose - they both think they’re ten years old! Barnaby has always suspected that their lawyer Hank had designs in Edwina, so he enlists the help of a group of children playing Cowboys and Indians, dons war-paint and decides to scalp Hank. Of course you know that eventually everybody will sample the formula and there will be a great deal of inspired craziness. Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers really let themselves go and they’re both terrific. Charles Coburn is amusing as Barnaby’s boss. Marilyn Monroe doesn’t get much to do but she’s good and she impressed Hawks enough to lead him to cast her in his next movie, the wonderful Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The movie starts a little slowly but the pace soon picks up and it becomes classic Hawks screwball comedy. It’s all good-natured fun with perhaps more sexual innuendo than you expect in a Hawks movie. The Region 4 DVD is without extras but it’s a decent transfer. The DVD cover gives the impression this is a Marilyn Monroe movie but she is strictly a minor player here. A good cast, plenty of the ludicrous situations that characterise this genre and plenty of laughs - there’s really no reason not to enjoy this movie.

Rio Bravo (1959)

In Rio Bravo in 1959 Howard Hawks returned to the themes that informed all his great action adventure movies. Once more we have we have a group of men facing danger and death, and once more they are professionals and as such they willingly accept the risks involved.

Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) has a prisoner in his gaol in a small border town in Texas. Joe Burdette is accused of murder. A US Marshal is on the way to collect the prisoner but will not arrive for six days. The problem for the sheriff is that Joe Burdette’s brother Nathan is the most powerful man in the county. Nathan is a rancher but in truth he’s more of a gangster. For Nathan Burdette murder is a minor matter compared to saving his brother from the noose. He has dozens of well-armed men and he is determined that his brother will not stay in gaol. Sheriff Chance has only his two deputies, a cripple (Stumpy, played by Walter Brennan) and a drunk (Dude, played by Dean Martin).



The plot is essentially a siege. When Nathan pays a travelling Mexican band to play the same song that the Mexican army played during the Battle of The Alamo to try to convince them of their doom it makes perfect sense. Chance and his men are every bit as besieged as the defenders of The Alamo.

The plot isn’t really the point of the movie. This is a heavily character-driven movie. The heroes will be sorely tested and their weaknesses will be exposed. Their ability to overcome those weaknesses will decide their fate.



This applies particularly to Dude. He’s an alcoholic and when the events of the movie start to unfold he’s been sober for precisely one day. He doesn’t know if he will be able to get the job done, and nor does Chance. There’s a memorable scene where the two of them have to go into a saloon full of bad guys to arrest a killer. Chance lets Dude take the lead. He wants to give Dude the chance to prove that he’s up to the job but he’s ever watchful in case this proves not to be the case. The scene is beautifully played by both actors.

Wayne gives one of his strongest performances, nicely leavened with humour. When Hawksian heroes face danger and death they don’t get all maudlin about it. Dean Martin is the big surprise. He apparently was very keen to land the role. He clearly thought he could do it justice, and he was right. Ricky Nelson is also surprisingly good as the young gunslinger Colorado Ryan. He wasn’t the world’s greatest actor but he’s more than adequate and he plays the role with a certain sly humour which complements Wayne’s performance nicely.



And then there’s the girl. Feathers (Angie Dickinson) is a classic Hawks woman. She’s feisty, strong, intelligent, resourceful and level-headed. In a tight corner she’s not a burden to the hero; she’s an asset. At first the love story between Chance and Feathers might seem a bit unlikely but really it makes perfect sense. She’s been married to one loser and she’s not going to make that mistake again. Next time she’ll pick a man who is worthy of her. She’s an alpha female and she’s going to go for the alpha male. While Dude and Colorado are both nice guys and they’re both cute John T. Chance is clearly the alpha male here. Angie Dickinson makes a slendid Hawksian woman.

This is an extraordinarily claustrophobic western. There’s hardly a scene in the movie where you can see the horizon. While other Hollywood westerns of the 50s were taking advantage of the widescreen formats to show the wide open spaces of the frontier Hawks takes the opposite tack. He closes everything in. His characters are trapped in the town, surrounded by Nathan Burdette’s gunmen. They’re in a universe of their own, completely cut off from the outside world, just like the airmen in Hawks’ much earlier Only Angels Have Wings. It’s a very effective technique and it really ratchets up the tension.



Hawks was not tying to do anything radical in this film. He was not trying to re-invent the western. This is a much more conventional movie than the westerns John Ford was making at the same time. What I suspect Hawks was trying to do was to show that the traditional western themes were timeless and that if done with sufficient skill they would still work. What it does have in common with the contemporary westerns of Ford, and of people like Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, is that it’s a very grown-up western.

While Hawks is dealing with well-worn themes he never descends to mere cliché. This is illustrated rather nicely by the character of Colorado. when we first meet him we expect he will fall into one of two cliché roles. We expect that most probably he will be the young hot-headed gunslinger - cocky, over-confident and dangerous - who will cause trouble for the sheriff. But it doesn’t happen. There is tension at first between Colorado and Chance, but that’s just the older man testing out the youngster. Chance soon decides that this kid is alright. The second alternative would have been for him to the typical rookie who needs the older man to teach him the ropes. But that doesn’t happen either. Colorado is young but he’s a cool-headed professional. We also suspect that when he is given his deputy’s badge he will clash with Dude, being a threat to the older man. In fact he and Dude get along very well.



While Hawks made some memorable westerns I don’t think he was a western director in the sense that John Ford was. John Ford movies like The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance could only have been westerns. There’s an obsession with the psychology of the frontier and the mythology of the west. Rio Bravo could just as easily have been a war movie, or a movie set in a big city with the heroes as cops. For Hawks the western was a means to an end, a way of telling the stories he liked to tell. For Ford the western was an end in itself.

With a fine script by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, a strong cast and with Hawks’ non-nonsense directing style Rio Bravo is magnificent entertainment.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Howard Hawks made many superb films, but he made few greater than Only Angels Have Wings. This 1939 aviation adventure romance has everything you expect in a great Howard Hawks movie.

Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) arrives in the South American town of Barranca. She expects to stay only until the next day, when her ship leaves again. She immediately finds herself mixed up with Geoff Carter’s flyers. Carter (Cary Grant) runs a small airline. The airline has the contract to fly air mail over the mountains. Their aircraft cannot fly high enough to fly above the mountains so they must fly through a narrow pass at 14,000 feet, and they must do this regardless of the weather.



It’s incredibly dangerous flying and accidents, frequently fatal, are common. As Bonnie is just about to find out. She was befriended by two of the pilots as soon as she left the ship and just a few hours later one of them, Joe, is killed. Twenty minutes after his fatal crash the other pilots are laughing and joking and when she berates them for having a good time so soon after his death the response is, “Who’s Joe?” It’s one of the most famous scenes in any Howard Hawks movie, and deservedly so. She soon discovers that their apparent callousness is not a sign that they don’t care; it’s a sign that they care too much. There is no other way they can cope.

Geoff Carter has other problems to deal with. The airline has one year to prove it can get the mail delivered on time. After that they will get a permanent contract which means a lot more money. But with several pilots and several aircraft already lost getting that permanent contract will be a real challenge. And then there’s the new pilot, McPherson (Richard Barthelmess). Only that’s not his real name, and everyone knows he’s the pilot who bailed out of a plane two years ago, leaving his mechanic to die. And the mechanic who died was the younger brother of Geoff Carter’s best friend and right hand man, The Kid (Thomas Mitchell).



And to add to his worries, McPherson arrived with his wife Judy (Rita Hayworth), who just happens to be an old flame of Geoff’s. Not just an old flame in fact, but the great love of his life. He doesn’t need any more problems, but he gets them. Like having to fly nitro-glycerine to a mine site. His pilots are already unhappy about having McPherson there. And what is he going to do about Bonnie? She’s obviously crazy about him but he believes flyers should never marry. He’s seen what happens to the wives when their men get killed and he’s always vowed never to do that to a woman.

You’d think the poor guy already had more than enough to worry about, and then Bonnie goes and shoots him. Now he’s only got one arm that works, one of his other pilots is in the same boat, and he’s had to ground The Kid because his eyesight is failing. They still have one mail run to go before they get that contract, the weather is closing in, they have a new untested Ford Tri-Motor and if the mail doesn’t go through that’s the end of the airline.



Only Angels Have Wings boasts some great aerial sequences (and some spectacular crashes). Apart from the flying sequences everything has a shot-in-the-studio feel which works to the film’s advantage. You feel like these people are in a little universe of their own where they have to work out their own problem and their own salvation.

Hawks was fascinated by what Hemingway referred to as "grace under pressure" - men facing danger and death with dignity and good humour, because how else can you face it? It’s a movie about old-fashioned virtues like friendship and courage, and overcoming fear and failure. It’s the sort of thing Hawks did supremely well. It could have been corny and contrived and conventional but it isn’t.



Cary Grant gives one of his finest dramatic performances. It’s a difficult and complex role. Carter is a cynical tough guy but he has to. He has to live with the knowledge that every time he sends a man on the mail run he may be signing his death warrant. When the weather is so bad that he can’t send anyone up he makes the flight himself. Thomas Mitchell, a wonderful character actor, is in fine form. Rita Hayworth wasn’t yet a star but she shows flashes of star quality. Jean Arthur is solid. Richard Barthelmess is splendid as a man being eaten alive by shame but determined to overcome it even if it costs him his life.

The characters are almost stereotypes, and in the hands of a lesser film-maker that’s what they would have remained. In the hands of Hawks they become much more. There’s not a bad performance in the movie. The flyers are men who know that each flight might be their last but this is the life they’ve chosen and they wouldn’t give it up for anyone.



This is Hawks at his best, a wonderful movie that manages to be both tragic and positive, and a movie entirely lacking in self-pity.

Columbia’s Region DVD release is extremely good despite the lack of extras.

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

A Girl in Every Port has several claims to fame. It was one of Howard Hawks’ very early movies (released in 1928). It was his second-last silent movie. And a German director named G. W. Pabst saw it and was so impressed by the female lead he decided to cast her in his next movie. The actress was Louise Brooks, the movie he cast her in was Pandora’s Box, and thus a legend was born.

A Girl in Every Port is in fact a male buddy film. Ordinarily not my favourite kind of movie, but you expect a male buddy film made by Howard Hawks to be better than average and it is. It’s also a comedy so it provides an intriguing glimpse of one of the greatest masters of cinematic comedy learning the ropes. It’s not quite vintage Hawks comedy but you can see that the potential was already there.



Spike (Victor McLaglen) is a sailor and he really does have a girl in every port. Or so he thought. But now every time he reaches port he finds that all the girls in his little black book are sporting a heart and anchor tattoo. Some other seafaring Lothario has been making time with Spike’s girls. Eventually he catches up to his rival. They start to fight it out, get caught up in a full-scale bar-room brawl, and end up in the lock-up. They discover that they have something in common besides women - they like brawling. And they like each other. Soon they are fast friends and shipmates.

All goes well until Spike meets a girl who is special (the girl is of course Louise Brooks). This girl, Marie, does a high-diving act in a carnival in a French port and Spike is convinced she is the sweetest girl a man could ever meet. She’s not the kind of girl you add to your little black book. She’s the kind of girl you marry, and settle down with. Maybe buy a little farm. Spike has enough money to do this. And she seem so anxious to share his dream of rural connubial bliss that she offers to look after his money for him, so he can’t be tempted to spend it.



Spike’s a nice guy but he’s a bit of an innocent where women are concerned. He’s had his share of success with the ladies but he’s inclined to take a rather romantic view of the fair sex. And he’s the kind of guy who likes to think the best of people. Anyone else would have figured out that Marie was just taking him for a ride and intending to fleece him, but Spike can’t see it.

Things get more complicated when he proudly introduces his new girl (and his intended future wife) to his best buddy Bill. Bill recognises her immediately. She used to be known as Tessy when she did her diving act in Coney Island. She and Bill were pretty friendly. So friendly that (although Spike doesn’t yet know it) Marie/Tessy sports Bill’s heart and anchor tattoo on her arm. What is Bill to do? Spike is his best friend. Can he allow this girl to take Spike for every penny he has and then leave him broken-hearted?



The movie’s sexual politics, and its moral dilemmas, are more complex than they appear to be. Spike and Bill adopt a love ’em and leave ’em policy towards their various girlfriends but their assumption is that the kinds of girls who date sailors know the score. The movie adopts a worldly view towards sex. Marie adopts a similar attitude towards men as the men in this movie adopt towards women, although their objective is sex while hers is money. In both cases no great harm is done unless you happen to be naïve enough (as Spike is) to not realise it’s all a game.

Mostly it’s a movie about friendship. Spike and Bill are true friends, and while that friendship will be sorely tested it will prove strong enough to survive.



Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong are likeable as the two seafaring buddies. Louise Brooks doesn’t get a lot of screen time but she certainly makes the most of what she does get. Her image is already well in place here, as the glamorous femme fatale - it’s obvious why Pabst was so impressed. And of course the camera adores her. Her acting style is not at all what you expect in silent comedy - it’s very understated and very subtle. She is most definitely not a slapstick comedienne. Brooks always admired actors (such as Leslie Howard) who understood the virtues of underacting.

But of course this is a comedy, so the question is, is it funny? The answer is yes, although not in a rolling-on-the-floor kind of way. It’s a cheerful amusing and engagingly amoral little picture, and being a Howard Hawks movie it’s comedy with an edge of intelligence and sophistication.



If you’re a Louise Brooks fan then it’s absolutely essential viewing of course.

Unfortunately this movie is not available in an official DVD release and those prints that are floating about are not in great condition. Most of the silent movies that Louise Brooks made in Hollywood before her departure for Germany survive but despite her huge cult following for some reason they have never enjoyed a proper DVD release.