110
STEPHEN FARBER
sional (a kind of quasi-existential stOiCism that comes directly from
Hemingway ) , the purity of masculine friendship, sexual tensions and
rivalries between men and women who are equally independent. One
can easily see the resemblances among Hawks's competitive, sexually
provocative, self-reliant women - for example, Rosalind Russell in
His
Girl Friday,
Lauren Bacall in
To Have and Have Not
and
The Big
Sleep,
Jane Russell in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
Angie Dickinson in
Rio Bravo.
But the similarities are not necessarily evidence of a unified
artistic vision. One could just as readily conclude that Hawks is simply
reworking formulas that he's found to be sure-fire entertainment. Of
El Dorado
Sarris writes: "Above all, Hawks has dared to repeat him–
self shamelessly from
Rio Bravo,
and revel in the repetition and the
self-awareness." Astoundingly, this is meant as the highest praise.
H awks's films do have a distinctive flavor, which raises them a
notch above the run-of-the-mill Hollywood entertainments of the period.
But H awks rarely tests himself to discover meaningful new variations
on the themes that obsess him - in the way that Bergman does, for
example. The "self-plagiarism" that Sarris considers a sign of greatness is
actually no more than a sign of laziness. Then too, it may be that the
personal concerns of Hawks's films are in themselves indications of
limitations rather than strengths. Hawks perpetuates a myth of mascu–
line cool and bravado that, while deeply felt and interesting in socio–
logical terms, is also shallow, distorted, and adolescent. Hawks's best
film is probably
Red River,
in which he does examine his typically
virile, stoical hero from a new perspective, for the first time pointing
up the egotism, ruthlessness, and brutality implicit in the masculine
",professionalism" more confidently celebrated in his other films.
Red
River
contains some self-questioning, some real exploration of his ob–
sessions. Perhaps
Red River
is more meaningful, as the auteurists would
argue, if you know something about Hawks's career. But the
auteur
approach cannot transform his other films - often charming but stub–
bornly superficial - into works of genius.
Of course in the case of many alleged
auteurs
-
technicians
and adapters like George Cukor or Blake Edwards - even the cultists'
identification of a "personal style" seems dubious. At the same time
films by many directors Sarris dismisses as "impersonal" - David Lean
or William Wyler, for example - might be found to yield hidden traces
of "personal" themes just as often as films of the more beloved
auteurs.
(Many of Lean's films concern an individual trying to escape or transcend
what he is by absorbing himself in a dangerous and exotic world ; while
Wyler's films often confront the intensities of family relationships or
