Howard Hawks - 1940
Hawks' technique is on a similar plane of near perfection to 'Scarface', again the tracking and the long takes and so on. The long scenes, each section of which like water through a flume segues into coincidences we don't really notice into the next, again confirms Hawks' very long scenes. The newspapaer office is built with such an array of voices as to conjure immediately. Ben Hecht's script is spit out, with a really surprising amount of, often riotously funny, cynisism at times.
Of course Hawks does do more than film twos and threes, he is not averse to a little, though not a lot, of SRS that is always thoughful and ver standard. We have the move in for emphasis, but always a focus on angle (as for height, it seems entirely unform; Hawks, with his high heads and particular height, and light grey suits dominating the windows behind, is distinctive).
The longer shots allow Grant to have wonderful moments to himself even when not speaking; that never cruel but always suprior smile, for example, teeth peaking through. The whirlwind script is packed with drops of ideology ripe to be take apart if one wishes, but this film is really like a force of nature; wonderfully willing to mock itself (he looks a bit like that actor, Ralph Bellamy...), and ver accpeting a joke or a movement less than the very highest. Mastery of the form.
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