Sorry for the light posting. Been busy with some other projects, other gigs, and whatnot. Also bothered by several thoroughly dispiriting events of the week. "Topics" might go up some time today at The Auteurs', that'll be fun. (UPDATE: Et voila.) In the meantime I'll be spending the Columbus Day weekend away from the intertubes if I can help it, so enjoy this little evocation of pig-headedness and futility, from one of Manny Farber's top films of 1951, and I'll see you late Monday.
Have a good weekend, Glenn.
through that corridor is the wisdom of a hundred coen brothers, wes anderson’s and the farelly’s but be forewarnd the luminescience of it all might blind you
“Good for you, Scotty.”
That’s the part of this film that I think best sums up the Hawksian ideal of manliness and honour, of toughness and chivalry. That the pig-headed doctor doesn’t deserve the gesture is irrelevant.
A great, great film. John Carpenter once claimed that there was “verifiable evidence” that Hawks directed the film and gave Nyby the credit, while Nyby himself claimed in an interview that, yes, he did indeed direct the film. Does anybody have any information or arguments, one way or the other (besides the obvious fact that the film is so throughly Hawksian?).
Hawks said he would occasionally visited the set and make suggestions like, “I think you’re attacking this scene wrong,” but that’s all. Given his well-known predilection for glory-hogging, if Hawks said Nyby directed the film, I have to believe him.