Howard Hawks

"In a career spanning half a century, Howard Hawks (1896-1977) made many of Hollywood's most critically acclaimed and enduringly popular films. Working in almost every genre, his output includes firmly established classics such as Scarface (1932), His Girl Friday (1940), The Big Sleep (1946), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959). But although one of the greatest American film-makers, he remains something of a marginalised figure and often goes unrecognised as the director of his own films. In this wide-ranging collection of new essays, leading international scholars provide reassessments of Hawks's work and working methods in relation to genre, gender, music, visual style, space and narrative. Spanning Hawks's silent period to the late Westerns, and focusing on his critical successes as well as his neglected and disparaged films, the volume recognises and re-evaluates his diverse contribution to film-making."--Page [4] of cover.