The thing from another world 1951 - Low-budget sci-fi classic

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Christian Nyby (Howard Hawks - uncredited)
Main Cast: Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Young, James Arness

"The scene is a distant Arctic research station, where a UFO has crashed. The investigating scientists discover that the circular craft has melted its way into the ice, which has frozen up again. While attempting to recover the ship, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) accidentally explodes the vessel, but the pilot - at least, what seems to be the pilot - remains frozen in a block of ice. The body is taken to base headquarters, where it is inadvertently thawed out by an electric blanket. The alien attacks the soldier guarding him and escapes into the snowy wastes. An attack dog rips off the alien's arm, whereupon Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) discerns that "The Thing" (played by future Gunsmoke star James Arness!) is not animal but a member of the carrot family, subsisting on blood. While the misguided Carrington attempts to spawn baby 'Things' with the severed arm, the parent creature wreaks murderous havoc all over the base. Female scientist Nikki (Margaret Sheridan) suggests that the best way to destroy a vegetable is to cook it. Over the protests of Carrington, who wants to reason with the 'visitor' (a very foolhardy notion, as it turns out), the soldiers devise a devious method for stopping The Thing once and for all." - www.allmovie.com

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Red river 1948 - Epic, emotional Western; a clash between the old and the new

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, Walter Brennan, Coleen Gray, Harry Carey Sr., John Ireland, Noah Beery Jr., Harry Carey Jr.

"In his first collaboration with John Wayne, Howard Hawks examines capitalism and dueling masculinities in the rousing context of a Western cattle drive. A Mutiny on the Bounty for Big Sky country, Red River features a challenge between Montgomery Clift's Matthew Garth and Wayne's Tom Dunson that becomes a contest between new and old models of Western manhood - a clash enhanced by the different performance styles of ambiguous, Method-acting, proto-rebel Clift and stolidly imposing star Wayne. Young and adaptable, Garth sees the necessity of finding new markets and cooperating with a community, including such potential adversaries as John Ireland's gun-loving Cherry, while Dunson's Old West individualism becomes an inflexible, economically ruinous monomania. The unsympathetic Dunson challenged the traditional Wayne persona, presaging the disturbed Western heroes that proliferated in the 1950s and 1960s, including Wayne's later role as psychotic Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and in the films that Red River writer Borden Chase wrote for director Anthony Mann. Powered by Russell Harlan's dynamic yet moody black-and-white cinematography and Dimitri Tiomkin's score, Red River became a substantial hit, confirming Clift's star quality in his film debut and earning Oscar nominations for Chase and action editor Christian Nyby; it still stands as one of Hawks's top Westerns." - www.allmovie.com

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The big sleep 1946 - One of the most influential detective movies

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone

"The definitive Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall vehicle, The Big Sleep casts Bogart as Raymond Chandler's cynical private eye Philip Marlowe. Summoned to the home of the fabulously wealthy General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), Marlowe is hired to deal with a blackmailer shaking down the General's sensuous, thumb-sucking daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). This earns Marlowe the displeasure of Carmen's sloe-eyed, seemingly straight-laced older sister Vivian (Bacall), who is fiercely protective of her somewhat addled sibling. As he pursues the case at hand, Marlowe gets mixed up in the murder of Arthur Geiger (Theodore von Eltz), a dealer in pornography. He also runs afoul of gambling-house proprietor Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), who seems to have some sort of hold over the enigmatic Vivian. Any further attempts to outline the plot would be futile: the storyline becomes so complicated and convoluted that even screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthmann were forced to consult Raymond Chandler for advice (he was as confused by the plot as the screenwriters). When originally prepared for release in 1945, The Big Sleep featured a long exposition scene featuring police detective Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey) explaining the more obscure plot details. This expository scene was ultimately sacrificed, along with several others, in favor of building up Bacall's part; for instance, a climactic sequence was reshot to emphasize sexual electricity between Bogart and Bacall, obliging Warners to replace a supporting player who'd gone on to another project. The end result was one of the most famously baffling film noirs but also one of the most successful in sheer star power." - www.allmovie.com

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To have and have not 1944 - A classic war time action-romance in the shadows of Casablanca

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael

"A masterful blend of comedy, romance, and action, Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not is filled with the director's signature situations and relationships. The characters could have been lifted from any one of a number of Hawks films: a strong, stoic hero (Humphrey Bogart), a clueless sidekick (Hawks regular Walter Brennan), and a bold, sexually-charged heroine (Lauren Bacall, in her screen debut). A few scenes even recur in the director's other films, such as the classic, post-kiss line, 'It's even better when you help'. Jules Furthman and William Faulkner loosely adapted the screenplay from an Ernest Hemingway novel; though the setting of To Have is the Caribbean, the characters and Bogart's unselfish transformation is clearly reminiscent of 1942's Casablanca. Hawks would exploit the tremendous chemistry between Bogart and Bacall again in his next film, 1946's The Big Sleep.
The film's enduring popularity is primarily - if not solely - due to the sexy chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, especially in the legendary 'You know how to whistle, don't you?' scene. The most salutary result of To Have & Have Not was the subsequent Bogart-Bacall marriage, which endured until his death in 1957. For the record, a more faithful-to-the-source cinemadaptation of the Hemingway original was filmed in 1950 as The Breaking Point." - www.allmovie.com

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Sergeant York 1941 - A great war movie with excellent performance by Cooper

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie

"Sergeant York is among the best of war-time propaganda films, with a superb performance by Gary Cooper in the title role. It was natural that, as the United States entered World War II, Hollywood would want to make a movie about the life of Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I. The real-life York set several conditions for the production: (1) That the film contains no phony heroics, (2) that Mrs.York not be played by a Hollywood 'glamour girl' and (3) That Gary Cooper portray York on screen. All three conditions were met, and the result is one of the finest and most inspirational biographies ever committed to celluloid. It is a tribute to the skills of director Howard Hawks that, removed from its historical context, Sergeant York remains one of the most powerful screen biographies, though it perhaps falls short when compared with the realism of such later war-bios as Patton. The battle sequences, edited by William Holmes, are usually sharp, and Cooper gives one of the most memorable performances of his outstanding career. Sergeant York was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning two, Cooper for Best Actor and Homes for Best Film Editing." - www.allmovie.com

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His girl Friday 1940 - One of the fastest talking movies ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart

"The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. It's doubtful that one could find a movie as fast-paced as Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, and next-to-impossible to find a film of the period more laced with sexual electricity. Decades after its release, the comedy-thriller adapted from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front Page holds up as a masterpiece of pacing and performance, and even manages a few healthy swipes at some of officialdom's sacred cows. At the time, His Girl Friday was also a piece of groundbreaking cinema for the rules it broke: Hawks' version added an element of sexual tension that was about the only thing missing from the original play and the 1931 film version, in which main characters Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson are men engaged in a symbiotic/exploitative professional relationship. Hawks transmuted Hildy Johnson into the persona of Rosalind Russell, who was entering her prime as an archetype of the ambitious, energetic woman. Coupled with Cary Grant's cheerful nonchalance as the manipulative editor Walter Burns, the material - which was fairly scintillating on its own terms - took on a fierce sexual edge that made the resulting film a 92-minute exercise in eroticism masquerading as a comic thriller. Russell may never have had a better role than Hildy Johnson; she became a screen symbol for the intelligent, aggressive female reporter, decades before Candice Bergen's star turn as television's Murphy Brown. Amid all of the jockeying for superiority, and the sparring between Grant and Russell - which, in many ways, anticipates the jousting between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Hawks' own The Big Sleep, made four years later - His Girl Friday found room to enhance some of the issues from the original play, including cynicism about government, the justice system and freedom of the press.
His Girl Friday may well be the fastest comedy of the 1930s, with kaleidoscope action, instantaneous plot twists, and overlapping dialogue. And if you listen closely, you'll hear a couple of 'in' jokes, one concerning Cary Grant's real name (Archie Leach), and another poking fun at Ralph Bellamy's patented 'poor sap' screen image. Subsequent versions of The Front Page included Billy Wilder's 1974 adaptation, which restored Hildy Johnson's manhood in the form of Jack Lemmon, and 1988's Switching Channels, which cast Burt Reynolds in the Walter Burns role and Kathleen Turner as the Hildy Johnson counterpart." - www.allmovie.com

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Tiger shark 1932 - The root of all the remakes

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IMDB rating: 6,5

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Richard Arlen, Zita Johann, Leila Bennett, J. Carrol Naish

"Legend has it that director Howard Hawks filmed Tiger Shark for Warner Brothers while on a fishing trip in Hawaii. Despite the off-handed nature of the production, the film - based on the play, They Knew What They Wanted - still manages to touch upon many of Hawks' signature themes. There's a morally complex love triangle, an examination of trust and loyalty, and the impending doom of an outside instrument of death (the sharks). Tiger Shark's driving story line is delivered in a typically Hawksian, no-nonsense style; the fishing scenes are highly charged and very realistic, significant for a film made in the 1930s. Two years after his breakthrough role in Little Caesar (1930), Edward G. Robinson proves his versatility as the Portuguese tuna boat skipper with a bitter, resentful side. Warner Bros. would unofficially remake Tiger Shark several times over the next ten years; while the professions of the two leading male characters would change, the basic 'triangle' plot remained the same." - www.allmovie.com

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The criminal code 1931 - "Somebody's got to pay!"

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021770/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, DeWitt Jennings, Mary Doran

"Howard Hawks' early sound prison melodrama, based on a play by Martin Flavin, already contains his stylistic signature of over-lapping dialogue - a technique he would greatly expand upon in the next ten years. Walter Huston is district attorney Brady, who quickly convicts Robert Graham (Phillips Holmes) of murdering a man who was harassing his girlfriend. Brady is later made the warden of the prison where Robert is held. Brady tries to make friends with Robert, but Robert will have no dealings with the new warden. Nevertheless, Brady, who thinks Robert is a decent man who became embroiled in extraordinary circumstances, gives Robert a job as his chauffeur. As he drives with Brady's daughter Mary (Constance Cummings), the two fall in love. Meanwhile, things heat up back at the prison, where crazed killer Ned Galloway (Boris Karloff) kills the squealer Runch (Clark Marshall). Robert knows Ned killed Runch, but refuses to tell Brady. Brady reluctantly sends Robert to solitary confinement to get him to give up the murderer's name, but Robert holds out on him.
Constance Cummins isn't given much as Huston's daughter but she is appealing. However, Boris Karloff gives one of his very finest performances as a tough but decent prisoner.
The Criminal Code is one of Hawks' lesser known films (maybe because he was uncredited as director). It is simply a superlative film that is dominated by powerhouse performances by Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes and Boris Karloff. Holmes acting was occasionally flat in films but when he was given the right role he was fantastic as he definitely was here. The Criminal Code, which opened on Broadway in 1929 and lasted a very respectable 179 performances, was another acting honor for Walter Huston."

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The dawn patrol or The flight commander 1930 - Early talkie Top Gun

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020815/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Neil Hamilton, Frank McHugh

"Howard Hawks' 1930 film The Dawn Patrol (retitled Flight Commnander because of the 1938 remake) plays remarkably well in the twenty-first century, considering its age. As with most movies made at the dawn of the sound era, the camera work is a bit static at times, and some theatrical artificiality creeps into the performances - there are moments where the viewer rightfully feels as though they're watching a silent movie, with just a bit too much visual emoting. But despite a few creaky joints, the film never loses its forward momentum, and Hawks makes good use of the available camera movement as well as music - specifically as source music, to excellent dramatic effect, and this would have been a new feature in movies of the era that holds up well eight decades later. There are still inter-titles to explain scene changes, and a few other artifacts of the period, but otherwise this version of The Dawn Patrol stands fairly well next to its remake - Neil Hamilton is fine as the harried commander of a Royal Flying Corp squadron during the middle of World War I, and Richard Barthlemess gives a good performance as his friend-turned-nemesis, the top pilot in the squadron but also his harshest critic. On them, with some help from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as Barthlemess's best friend, rests most of this drama, and that drama, despite its age, is still compelling. Where this film does differ somewhat from the remake is its relative brevity - 82 minutes versus 103 - and also a tighter focus on the grimness of the story. Owing to differences in the script and their approaches to acting, Barthlemess's Courtney shows little of the devil-may-care spirit with which Errol Flynn (being Errol Flynn) couldn't help but imbue his character with in the remake. There are some moments of comedy, and out-and-out joy, but as a product of 1930 as opposed to 1938, eight years closer to what most adults regarded as a shattering event, the overall tone of this picture is, understandably, more thoroughly earnest. Indeed, not even James Finlayson - best remembered across the four subsequent generations for his comedy work in association with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - is totally believable to modern audiences as a tough ground crew sergeant, without the picture losing a beat of its message and atmosphere." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-dawn-patrol-v88836/

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Only angels have wings 1939 - An overlooked film in Hawks' career but it made Rita Hayworth a star

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031762/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell

"Only Angels Have Wings exemplifies the complex, taciturn male bravado common to the films of Howard Hawks. Unfairly lumped into the genre of the airborne drama, it is one of Hawks' more neglected films. An experienced pilot himself, Hawks based Angels on real people and events from his time spent on the airfields; his brother was killed in a plane crash. Cary Grant plays the courageous, fatalistic lead, and Jean Arthur is the typical Hawksian heroine, strong with a subversive, gender-bending edge. Supporting player Rita Hayworth became a major Hollywood star after Angels. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever "best special effects" Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn. The film would receive a wartime update as 1942's The Flying Tigers." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/only-angels-have-wings-v36481/

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Bringing up baby 1938 - The quintessential screwball comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947/
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson

"Bringing up baby is the quintessential screwball comedy, and one of the crowning comic achievements in the careers of director Howard Hawks and stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It may also be one of the defining examples of comedy feature film at its purest and most basic. At the time of its release, it seemed to close out the screwball genre: the portrayals in film inflated and punctured an array of movie (and social) stereotypes in as fine a style had ever been accomplished. The screwball comedy originated in the depths of the Great Depression as a reaction to the despair of everyday life, as well as to the publicized antics of wealthy fops and heiresses who seemed oblivious to the fact that people were literally starving to death. The idle rich were the genre's essential ingredient, from satirical pre-screwball efforts such as Zoltan Korda's Cash (an especially offbeat example since it was made in England) to pioneering Hollywood screwball comedies like Gregory La Cava's My man Godfrey. As time passed, however, other targets became acceptable, including intellectual 'eggheads' and eccentric members of officialdom. Bringing up baby skewers all of them and more - including over-zealous psychiatrists and blustery, pretentious upper-class stuffed shirts - hitting the bullseye with each one. Apart from its acting, pacing, and verbal acrobatics (an essential element of any Howard Hawks talking picture), Bringing up baby is a masterful achievement precisely because it distills its diverse ingredients down to the characters. The plot, such as it is, deals with mistakes and mistaken identities (right down to heiress Hepburn's pet leopard) but is really about nothing - absolutely nothing, to paraphrase a standard articulated by Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s. Even the one main element of the 'story' - the search for a missing dinosaur bone belonging to the museum where Cary Grant's character works - is such an obvious, ridiculous comic device, a comedic equivalent to Hitchcock's 'MacGuffin' concept. The screwball comedy was never quite the same, nor was any filmmaker or cast able to build a film on such slight material so successfully ever again." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/bringing-up-baby-v7142

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Twentieth century 1934 - The movie which invented screwball comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025919/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns

"Based on the Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Twentieth Century is 'screwball comedy' at its screwiest. Director Howard Hawks once claimed that he was the first to treat his romantic leads like comedians: whether he was or not, it is true than Barrymore and Lombard deliver two of the funniest performances of the 1930s.
Poking fun at his master thespian image, Barrymore's hammy Broadway impresario Oscar alternately threatens to shut 'the Iron Door' on his associates or kill himself to get his way, but ultra-spirited Lombard as shopgirl-Mildred-turned-diva-Lily proves his equal in acting chops and screen strength. With most of the action confined to the eponymous train, Oscar's machinations to get the estranged Lily to star in his next show rise in hysterical pitch as the quarters get increasingly close, culminating in another Oscar death spectacle for an audience of passengers. Swiftly paced by Hawks, the rapid-fire jokes and arguments never let up, setting the standard for the genre's speed and humor. With equally superb supporting performances from Walter Connolly and Roscoe Karns, Twentieth Century became a box office hit, turning Lombard into a star comedienne and joining It Happened One Night (1934) as the prototype for the screwball genre." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/twentieth-century-v51294

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Scarface 1932 - A gold standard among classic gangster pictures

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023427/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,8

Directors: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Boris Karloff

"Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name is a potent, uncompromising portrait of the gangster life. While journalists often romanticized them, and many in the public made mobsters into folk heroes, director Howard Hawks' portrayal of the brutish and ambitious Capone-inspired titular character, played with terrific ferocity by Paul Muni (this movie made him a star, and it is easy to see why) is brutal and stark. The pre-noir gangster genre was in many ways defined by the innovative approaches taken by Hawks in Scarface. Tracking and dolly shots, relatively unknown at the time, contribute to the film's kinetic energy and excellent pacing. The expressionistic black-and-white cinematography by Lee Garmes is married to a screenplay (written by a team led by Ben Hecht) packed with symbolism as well as a rare combination of humor, sex, and violence. Paul Muni's portrayal of Al Capone surrogate Tony Camonte etched a screen original: a merciless assassin who's not only reflexively criminal but pre-civilised, almost pre-evolutionary, a simian shadow ready to rub out the world if he can't have it for his own. This extremely violent film (28 murders are recorded onscreen) also grafts a racy incest theme (Muni's character has Caligula-like feelings for his sister, played with remarkable sexual confidence by Ann Dvorak) onto the story line, resulting in considerable pressure from censors (the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) coming to bear on the filmmakers (in this pre-Hays Production Code era).
Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn't release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle 'The Shame of the Nation' to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. This is still one of the greatest, darkest, most deeply exciting films American cinema has produced."

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