USA,
1932, 90 min
Shown in 1972 / 1999
CREDITS
- dir
-
Howard Hawks
- prod
-
Howard Hughes, Howard Hawks
- scr
-
Ben Hecht, Seton I. Miller, W.R. Burnett
- cam
-
Lee Garmes
- editor
-
Edward Curtis
- cast
-
Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Osgood Perkins, Boris Karloff, Vince Barnett
- source
-
Swank Motion Pictures, 201 South Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63103. FAX 314-289-2192
-
COMMENTS
Shown at Howard Hawks tribute in 1972, despite the screening being forbidden for contractual reasons. Howard Hawks in person. Shown for the Karen Morley tribute as part of The Unvanquished series in 1999, but she was unable to attend in person.
OTHER
It was the worst of times, it was the best of films: Scarface was to be the gangster film to end all gangsters, but instead it produced a genre, and perhaps a few mobsters, inspired by Howard Hawks’ fun-lovin' criminals riding the crest of a nation’s misery. Of course, they all meet their Maker, but killing them is like Buñuel’s “one less fly”—it only makes room for more. That’s the real energy behind Hawks’ rat-a-tat-taut direction that weaves visual tics (like the ubiquitous image of the X) and humor into the tragic trajectory of Tony Camonte, the original Italian Stallion doomed by his charged love for his own sister. So into this film that gave Paul Muni his first big role and introduced George “Little Boy” Raft walks Karen Morley’s Poppy, cracking wise and electrifying the suits with her silken superiority while she is secretly smitten by their sensual anarchy. Suffice to say, if all the molls in all the gangster films had her moxie, it would have been a women’s genre. Poppy is unequaled until Lauren Bacall’s similarly smoky smarty in another Hawks film, 22 years later. Obviously, Hawks followed the gangster’s credo: “Do it first... and keep on doin’ it.”
—Judy Bloch
FACTOID #347
The world premiere of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert took place at the 1994 San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre.
