Pauline Kael

my question was really about the film more than the plot

?

Anyhoo, Fred Camper calls Red River the 4th greatest film of all-time. As much as I dig it, though, I've never quite gotten what he sees in it. Something about the film growing organically from the gestures of the actors.

well, you explained the plot (which makes it sound kind of like 'anchorman') but apart from the possible interest it has *as compared with other hawks films* im not sold that it's particularly distinguished as a film

but i haven't seen 'red line'

the idea that 'red river', which i have seen, is the fourth best film of all time is not one i can really entertain for a second

The story, you mean. Which is part of the film. And had R Baez not asked, I wouldn't have bothered. Come on - you know that detailing Red Line 7000's moderne editing patterns would have been wasted on you.

But fwiw Fred Camper is a rabid formalist (although he likes to deny this) so were he to waste his time defending any Hawks, he'd do so largely on those grounds.

Come on - you know that detailing Red Line 7000's moderne editing patterns would have been wasted on you.

not really, just think you're bluffing

i'd be interested to see a formalist cast for hawks, in a way

i mean shit, maybe it's a radical departure from everything he'd done before, but for 'moderne' in 1964 i'm going to need something pretty impressive, and you've already given away the race scenes as nothing much

My favorite Hawks:

Only Angels Have Wings
His Girl Friday
The Big Sleep
Bringing Out Baby

otm

I'm a little surprised OAHW hasn't been mentioned enough. Is it because Jean Arthur is so annoying?

i'm going to need something pretty impressive

And I'm going to need a sack of $$$ cuz your ass is trolling, sister. But nice try.

Soto, looooove Only Angels Have Wings but dude had tons of great films so something's gotta give.

Just for fun:

Top Five Ford (although I have a long way to go with him):

1. 7 Women
2. Wagon Master
3. The Long Gray Line
4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
5. How Green Was My Valley

And wth

Top Five Preminger:

1. Angel Face
2. Fallen Angel
3. Bunny Lake Is Missing
4. The Human Factor
5. Daisy Kenyon

Who else was Kael cranky about that we can get list queeny over?

I'd toss in Advise and Consent.

Other auteurist bete noires of Kael's: Hitchcock way at the top, Capra, probably Ray and Sirk (don't remember specific digs, she mostly just ignored them altogether), and--he was only a favorite of Sarris's many years later--Billy Wilder.

Walsh, too, I think. For some of these folks, though, there'd be at least one film she loved almost without reservation: Notorious, His Girl Friday, and Stagecoach come to mind, although I'd have to check the last two.

Walsh is dicey "auteur" territory. He's like Wellman or Hathaway -- I'd never discuss him in the same breath as Cukor or Hawks.

Not with Hawks, no, but in The American Cinema, Sarris had Walsh in the same second-tier category as Cukor. And I think Walsh gets mentioned in "Circles and Squares."

I thought we already condemned Sarris' taxonomies to the seventh circle of the square.

I'm lost. My only point is, I think Walsh is absolutely considered an auteur in the original sense--by Sarris, by the French, by all the first-generation auteurists. Every bit as much as Cukor.

Her take on Midnight Cowboy II was pretty insightful.

Dr. Tongue!

From SCTV?

Yeah--there was this segment with Dr. Tongue and Woody Tobias, Jr. plugging their Midnight Cowboy sequel, and they had the woman who'd periodically do Kael (she wasn't all that great) critiquing it. Quite bizarre.

Hey, what do you know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDdfD8nHbok

Oh wow--makes me nostalgic for Yonge St. circa 1979.

That 3D effect never gets old

kael was actually not 'cranky' about hawks, she loved all the classic ones and even praised some of them (like 'bringing up baby,' which i think she compared to restoration comedy) rather extravagantly. i don't think i'm the one to mount a formalist defense of his movies but the original 'scarface' has some great long shots, and is beautifully stylized right down to the performances -- definitely a lot there to talk about. the rambling, discursive, seemingly half-improvised nature of a lot of his movies appeals to me, and gives them a very distinctive flavor that you don't find in any other movies of the period. ('to have and have not' has basically the same plot and setting as 'casablanca,' but their tone couldn't be more different.)

Is it because Jean Arthur is so annoying?

To hell w/ you

I'm lost. My only point is, I think Walsh is absolutely considered an auteur in the original sense--by Sarris, by the French, by all the first-generation auteurists. Every bit as much as Cukor.

― clemenza, Monday, December 20, 2010 3:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this was the starting point for 'circles and squares'. kael pointed out that all sarris had done was see a similarity between two mediocre (at best) walsh movies. i don't trust the first generation auteurists. they weren't good critics; they had a cloistered fanboy outlook on the world; and the movies they championed were frequently uninteresting unless you're tuned in to their obscurantist wavelength, which KJB is, i guess -- that or he's just challopping.

though historically important, during the silent period, walsh is hardly in the same rank, as an artist, as, well, david lean, to go for a random director they didn't talk about. or huston, who they hated. or elia kazan -- did they even talk about him?

perhaps if i saw all one hundred of his movies i'd disagree, but it's unlikely.

I detect similarities between Walsh, Lean, Huston and Kazan. I'm uninterested in all of them.

i like 1940s lean, some huston, some kazan... i think i've enjoyed some films directed by raoul walsh but there isn't the time to spend on him

glad you two could bond over the unimportance of Raoul Walsh; I will continue to neglect post-'50s horror shit.

I'm a big-tent guy. (In theory--in practice, I spend way too much time re-watching my favorite films to ever get to a lot of stuff I should watch.) I want them all in there: Hawks, Walsh, Preminger, Ray, etc., but also Lean, Zinneman, Kazan--especially Kazan--Huston, etc. Everything and everybody. Except costume dramas and Inland Empire--they get turned away at the door.

Eric, you sure are incurious about butch filmmakers for a guy who climbs rocks regularly.

(not a drug reference btw)

Kael was wrong about Capra and Sirk, but I don't think that was any reaction to auteurism, it was more her personality and what she perceived as sentimentality.

She liked several Capra movies though, and was at best tolerant of Sirk.

The only Capra I can think of that she liked was The Bitter Tea of General Yen--were there others? I know she recoiled from the big populist ones. She had that great line on Wonderful Life (paraphrase): "No one has Capra's gift for sentimentality--and you find anybody who does, kill him."

I had the general thrust of the line right, but the wrong film--it was Mr. Smith.

"No one else can balance the ups and downs of wistful sentiment and corny humour the way Capra does--but if anyone else should learn to, kill him."

The fate of the world depends upon clarifying this...Kael seemed to like Capra right up to and including Mr. Deeds (especially It Happened One Night); after that, not much at all. Don't know about You Can't Take It with You, though--no entry in 5001 Nights.

More Top Fives!

Hitch

1. Rear Window
2. Rebecca
3. Rope
4. Frenzy
5. Under Capricorn

Ray

1. Johnny Guitar
2. The Lusty Men
3. On Dangerous Ground
4. Rebel With A Cause
5. The Savage Innocents

Sirk

1. Imitation of Life
2. All That Heaven Allows
3. There's Always Tomorrow
4. Magnificent Obsession
5. Written on the Wind

Capra
1. The Bitter Tea of General Yen
and um maybe...
2. Dirigible?
Just don't get him.

Walsh I don't quite get either. Many of his films left little impression on me so his oeuvre is no longer a priority. But I dug:
A Distant Trumpet
Pursued
Me and My Gal
and I have a soft spot for the classic turkey The Horn Blows at Midnight

I don't even consider Walsh that important. He made a couple of good films.

3. Rope
4. Frenzy
5. Under Capricorn

Wow.

yeah i saw U/C under the best conditions, and it's a bust

couple nice camera moves

Poor Raoul Walsh. It's been ages since I saw They Drive By Night, but I remember it as being really good.'

Can't wait to see this director's cut of Rebel with a Cause!

frenzy is the weird R-rated british one with titties right

i feel like white heat is better than anything preminger or sirk ever did but w/e

not that ive seen everything preminger or sirk ever did!

Kev, thou iconoclast, dissing In a Lonely Place.

I remember The Horn Blows at Midnight being kinda funny! At least if you love Benny.

God--how could I forget White Heat? I think I'd take that over even my favorite Hitchcock or Hawks film, and way before anything by Ray, Sirk, or Preminger.

xpost Yeah I've talked about In a Lonely Place somewhere here before - saw it early in cinephilia and loved it, saw it later and couldn't access what I first saw in it. Maybe in another ten years, it'll hit me again.

Fwiw as much as I love me some auteurism, I've bumped heads with other, perhaps more hardline auteurists for pumping, say, Joan Crawford as an auteurist or for questioning the director as the ultimate/only source for what winds up on screen/in speakers. There's been tons of terrific work taking other personnel as auteurs, e.g., Christina Lane, "Stepping Out From Behind The Grand Silhouette: Joan Harrison's Films of the 1940s" in Authorship and Film, eds. David Gerstner and Janet Staiger (in fact, that entire collection is good for poking holes in the auteur theory). It's not the ONLY lens through which I view the entirety of cinema.

Also, the auteur theory shares a great deal with genre theory so I don't see what the big deal is apart from the fact that genre theory makes some people cranky as well. You approach the oeuvres Ford or Hawks or whoever as if they were genres, figuring out how the oeuvre/genre works (just like those Ford and Hawks communities!), looking for themes and variations, discovering ways to complicate the categories, etc. And genre theory means you get to watch even more movies!

The Roaring Twenties > White Heat