‘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 Mc Bride 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.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction
Storytelling
Beginnings
Silent Films
Talking Pictures
The Business of Movies
Working with Writers: I
Working with Actors
Scarface and Howard Hughes
Two Films with James Cagney
William Faulkner
MGM and Viva Villa!
Twentieth Century
Comedy and Tragedy
Grant and Hepburn
Working with Writers: II
His Girl Friday
Camerawork
Samuel Goldwyn
Sergeant York
Air Force
Ernest Hemingway
The Hawksian Woman
Bogart and The Big Sleep
Walter Brennan
John Ford
The Western
John Wayne
Red River
Marilyn Monroe
Music
Themes and Variations: Three Westerns
Hatari!
Critics
Today’s Actresses
Today’s Movies
Late Projects
Advice to Young Directors
Circa l’autore
Joseph Mc Bride is the author of twenty-two books, including acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg, two other books on Welles, and critical studies of Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder. A former reporter, reviewer, and columnist for Daily Variety in Hollywood, Mc Bride is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.