SCFZ poll: Henry King

[...]

Yeah, not to belabor a question that Karl was likely not even that serious about asking, but in a commercial film industry there is a big difference between director as artist in the sense of being like an author or painter and someone who exerts limited creative control as part of a much larger system. Creative freedom in such a system is inextricably tied to financial success. "Great" Hollywood directors have to make money to have long careers with creative control, if they don't find an audience, they don't make the movies they want, but if they do find an audience they can still get stuck making movies for the audience rather than their own artistic interests, should they even have them.

Movies made in the studio era of Hollywood were ran more like a sports franchise in some ways, the studio acted as general manager, selecting the director and actors and choosing which scripts would get made. They also supplied all the additional creative talent and infrastructure that fleshes out the worlds of the movies. A director was mostly more like a coach, hired on to run the show while on set, exercising varying degrees of creative influence in that realm, but subject to being overruled by the studio or the whims of their stars when the stars were more important to the studio financially than the director. Gable could get Cukor fired from Gone with the Wind because Gable was more important to the studio than Cukor in how they saw the money making aspect. At the same time, Selznick had invested so much into Gone with the Wind that any director or star wasn't going to dictate the larger production, that was determined by Selznick and envisioned to large extent by his production designer William Cameron Menzies, who is more responsible for the look of GWTW than the named directors via the approval of Selznick.

With a director like King, who was of considerable value to the studio, roughly say like that of Hathaway perhaps, directors of that stature had some limited ability to take on and reject scripts/projects, but usually through a process of bargaining with the studio, where they might be able to turn one down if they took an alternate, or where the studio would pressure them into taking a project they weren't enthused about with the promise of a later one they might like.

The same thing was true with the stars. Studios would buy scripts with stars in mind or that they thought they could fill with some of their contract players. They'd "offer" scripts to their biggest stars, which could be rejected to some extent, but only if they would take up something else instead. Directors and stars could sometimes try to initiate projects, but they couldn't just make them without studio approval. With stars like Tyrone Power the complication was that he wanted to act, but the studio wanted him to maintain his star image which was built on crowd pleasers that often didn't require much acting talent. King ended up working with Power a lot I think because he did allow Power to split the difference a bit, go beyond his more dreary roles into something that asked a little more from him. King's accommodation in this regard seemed to keep Power reasonably happy, at least compared to the alternatives, so they kept getting slotted together to keep Power happy and maybe King too for all I know. Power could have rejected King as a choice between films anytime and the studio would have assigned someone else to Powers next picture while moving King to another project since they wouldn't want to lose him either. There wasn't much of an out from this system other than to do as Alice Faye did and retire when she wasn't being offered projects she wanted to work on. The studio wanted her in musicals where she'd play a fairly restricted range of characters and she wanted more.

When you look at a director like King, you can't place too much emphasis on what kinds of movies he made as saying a lot about him as he certainly didn't initiate most of the movies himself, but was slotted to take them for a more complex set of reasons. In Old Chicago was a Faye/Power vehicle intended as a major "blockbuster" style screen event with "something for everyone" in a GWTW manner. King being given the job was both an acknowledgement of his ability to do prestige pictures and kept the stars in familiar hands. King is undoubtedly responsible for how we see the movie onscreen to a large extent, but it isn't just a King movie as much as it is a system one in how it all came together. That's the same for most quality Hollywood directors outside of a select few like Ford, Hawks, Wyler, Hitchcock, and a few others who managed to have enough success to choose their own projects and/or formed their own production companies that worked alongside but slightly outside the studio control for having that history of success.

Guys like King or Hathaway, as successful as some of their movies were, didn't have the same kind of freedom. Hathaway, for example, didn't want to do Brigham Young since he hated filming religion and wagon trains, which is pretty much the story of the movie in a nutshell, but they promised him another movie he wanted to work on to get him to direct it. That kind of give and take was how they kept the system running and the people generally content. It also speaks to the notice raised about how the best movies of directors tend to cluster around short periods of time. Success leads to expanded freedom, while failure leads to contraction of freedom. Directors can experiment and be more personal when they have success. Critical acclaim buys some chance to try again, but only for a brief time if financial success doesn't follow. Repeated financial underperforming leads to reduced work or work on lower prestige/budget movies until success is found and the process starts again. Ironically at some lower levels there is again greater freedom for there being less financial investment involved. Tourneur was able to work on the lower level films and keep making interesting artistic movies that made enough to keep him doing the same kind of thing his whole career. More success would have bought him less freedom in some important ways unless it was enough to buy him more complete control like those few hardasses who wouldn't give the studios control and who found willing audiences for their films, but that's a small select group of guys.

(That's the short version anyway, other directors tried to go "indie", like Rbson and Wise after fucking over Lewton, and failed, while Boetticher had some success with an outside producer when the system changed and Hollywood practices evolved as the old studio system collapsed, but where some of the same basic dynamics still are in play. Tom Cruise, for example, is the most powerful person on a Tom Cruise movie set, not the director, while franchise movies have their own logic that keeps everything else secondary, and so on.)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Definitely agree with that assessment, though your knowledge base could run laps around mine so thanks for the background on King and Power et al. Personally, that collaborative interchange of different personalities, dare I say creative power struggles, is part of what makes studio system filmmaking such an interesting object of study (for me at least). Never considered the analogy with sports franchises, but that's a compelling comparison, I might start using that. Food for thought.

Just sourced all the silent King films I want to see so I may try those. The sound era ones look pretty stodgy. So do the silent ones, but I figure ersatz Griffith should be better than Oscarbait-mode Zanuck. Hoping in vain I can find one King film I'd like to vote for by poll's end...

[...]

Oh, I don't know all that much about King directly, I'm more working with what I know about Power and the studio at the time and some general assumptions based on that. Financial considerations are just something I think gets ignored too much for being a dreary topic, yet it's such an important one for what movies get made. Even directors like Ford and Hawks had to have those concerns in the back of their minds, if not the forefront. Why did Ford make so many westerns? Why did Hawks remake Rio Bravo a couple times? Was it for the art or the cash? Both to some degree I'm sure, but we pretend it's all about the art way too often.

[wba2]

Hmm, I think it's nice reading all that stuff, and yes, many artists always worked (and also today still work) on a picture, so you have a lot of creative input. But for me the artistry of a director lies in his handling of the mise-en-scene, in his actual directing of every scene and moment. No matter what the subject matter, no matter what the screenplay, no matter the interference or difficulty or even if he liked what he was doing.
A lot of painters in the old times had to paint what they were told. It's not like they dreamed about painting a portrait of some aristocrat or another. But that doesn't make their work any less exciting or important.

I think, in art, it's always in the "how", in the way one does something, and not in the "what", in the subject matter.

So I generally think all this mentioning of studio directors as "craftsmen" or "artisans" is correct, but they were no less an artist than a Brakhage or a Wiseman. Cause the art of the director is exactly that, directing. And you can watch the director at work as you watch a film. During every film. And a director doesn't have to have a "personality" to be a great artist, but must be great at directing. Like a painter must be great at painting. Or a writer at writing. No matter what he writes.

I honestly don't get all these decade-old discussions. I know it's difficult to "see" a director at work while watching a film - it''s certainly more difficult to recognize it than recognizing the camerawork, the cutting, or the acting (although this also has to be learned), but it's not something too difficult (or some kind of voodoo or magic) if you've seen a fair share of films and put some thought into the way films are made and put together over the years.
Thus for me a guy like Michael Curtiz is a better director (and more important artist) than say someone like Ingmar Bergman (not meant to denigrate Bergman, just picking some random beloved auteur), cause his directing is better.

Maybe I feel that way, cause my primary enjoyment with movies is ALWAYS the directing. That's first for me, (well, sometimes on par with the materiality of celluloid, which can become more important if you watch an actual print - but which is almost nonexistent at home) - that's the thing I love the most about movies. Everything else comes second.

I guess it's different for most people (or at least a lot), who usually care about other stuff, so that's probably why many people have difficulty spotting ace directing, or don't know what it is at all. Say for example guys like D'Amato, Franco, etc. get often a rough treatment for their "subject matter", which is laughable and out of place if you look at their aristry as directors. If Pasolini would have made films like Salo all his career...

I mean, who cares who did what, why or for what motives. The films are there and speak for themselves, live for themselves, and each one who has eyes to see (and who has learned to see - watching a film is not an ability one is automatically born with, as the appreciation of every artform can seem difficult at first) can watch a film and admire the art of directing. If the viewer is interested in such stuff, of course.

Basically I'm probably baffled at this discussion cause the art of directing can be plainly seen and appreciated when watching a film - no matter what the director was given to work with. Like a great pianist or guitarist - even if the instrument is badly tuned and the notes and tunes he's forced to play are trivial and unengaging in themselves, you can still spot a great artist simply by watching him play.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Alas, can't say I agree with that assessment, but I appreciate the passion all the same! We can certainly agree that directing is plainly extremely important, even within studio mode of production filmmaking, and a joy to watch for and study within any mode of production. Probably the wrong subforum to dive into extended debate on film authorship in general, so I'll keep mum on my disagreements. But one minor criticism that I feel behooved to voice: 'He' is an inaccurate pronoun to use when referring to directors in general, as it's not a catch-all for the job, even if one is speaking only of the heavily gendered labor division of studio-era Hollywood (see Normand, Weber, Arzner, Lupino, etc.).

[...]

Yeah, even if I were to agree with the premise of the argument, which I'm afraid I can't as the what necessarily informs the how among other things, the argument isn't even necessarily true in a credit sense with studio heads like Zanuck giving instruction on how to shoot scenes at times in addition to saying what should be shown. Zanuck gave notes to Ford on how to shoot Fonda in Young Mr Lincoln and what to show in Grapes of Wrath, for example, and Menzies work at MGM was often more important than that of the directors he worked with in how the films looked and were shot. King had a bit of a dust up with Humberstone over In Old Chicago because Humberstone was irked he didn't get proper credit for shooting the climatic fire scenes as second unit director. It's complicated.

[wba2]

I agree that it's not as important if one is not as interested (as me, for example) in the art of directing. And of course the director doesn't have to be the decisive author when authorship is discussed (of course producers and movie stars, especially in the studio era had often much bigger influence). But that doesn't matter, as I'm talking about the art of directing (which I think is what a director does - everything else he does can be neglected in regard to his artistry). Same as it doesn't matter for a great cinematographer, if the director tells him how to light the set and how to operate the camera. Cause if that mattered, people like Kubrick for example could have picked any cinematographer and simply told him what to do.

Also auteurism (what the french called politique des auteurs) is solely about directing.

What I'm saying is that in my opinion the art of a director, his job is directing. As an actor acts, a painter paints, a writer writes. Thus I think to assess the artistry of a director, only the execution of his mise en scene is relevant. Not if he enjoyed what he was doing, or if his work was deemed important byhis collaboraters or his employers.

PS: Of course Zanuck gave Ford instructions, cause that's what (good) producers do. And of course "Menzies work at MGM was often more important than that of the directors he worked with in how the films looked and were shot", because that is the job of a set designer and an art director, and Menzies was one of the best. Still that doesn't say anything about the quality of the directing.
As to the gender stuff, it's self-evident that people of various genders (not just male and female) worked in the film industry (and in any job anywhere in the world at every possible time. Thus I didn't try to point it out, as it's also irrelevant to the qualit of directing (as to any artistic endeavour) which gender one identifies as.

[wba2]

And I wouldn't necessarily say directing is extremely important or even important within a studio mode of production (only insofar as you want your picture wrapped up quickly and smoothly), cause you can get the "desired results" even without a director, or at least with a bad director as well as a good one. I'd say studio heads and especially producers at the time (as producing is also a creative, sometimes even artistic undertaking) were generally just interested in good directing (and thus automatically in making art - even if they wouldn't have called it so themselves), and understood more about it than the current crop of people in Hollywood. As one can see nowadays, the audience cares a crap about directing, and even badly directed stuff can make a shitload of money.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

As to the gender stuff, it's self-evident that people of various genders (not just male and female) worked in the film industry (and in any job anywhere in the world at every possible time. Thus I didn't try to point it out, as it's also irrelevant to the qualit of directing (as to any artistic endeavour) which gender one identifies as.

I broadly agree with this sentiment, and I'm glad to hear this is your view! All I'll say in response is that although that view strikes you as self-evident, it won't be self-evident to your readers that this is your view if you use 'he/him/his' pronouns to refer to directors in general as in "the art of a director, his job is directing." There is a school of thought that says 'he/him' pronouns can be used as gender-neutral or universal, but I don't subscribe to that school and 'they/them' would be more agreeable to me. To be clear, I don't mean this as a moral criticism. It's more of an accessibility request, as a (trans) woman member of this forum. But it's your decision.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

(Gee, I'm a barrel of laughs, aren't I...)

My apologies, Flip, that there is now such a hefty, topic-adjacent exchange you'll have to scroll by when tally-time comes!

It makes sense, though, that this broader conversation would crop up. Like Clarence Brown who was polled recently, Henry King isn't a director who has ever been taken up by auteurist criticism (to my knowledge; he's a 'subject for further research' in Sarris, and the evaluation is quite negative), so deciding to evaluate his films is bound to well up in us broader questions about what it means to approach a director's filmography as a body of work.

[flip]

No apology needed! When I started the polls, they were really meant to (sometimes) inspire focused discussion about individual directors, which we didn't often have otherwise - the poll results themselves often are a bit predictable anyway, so that's not really the point (though the individual ballots are often interesting, so I still like the exercise). So everyone should feel welcome to take the polls as a springboard to discuss whatever issues seem worth discussing!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Ah, that's a relief then, and I'll modify my previous reticence to dive into thing on those grounds!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

On the 'art of directing' point, I definitely misinterpreted you early, WBA, my apologies! I now see that you were not saying that directors are the defining authorial creative force behind any and all movies made but rather that directing is almost always an aspect of filmmaking and the job of directing is the one you most appreciate watching for and most find interesting to study. Which is totally, totally fair. Indeed, I might well feel the same way!

[wba2]

As to the gender stuff, it's self-evident that people of various genders (not just male and female) worked in the film industry (and in any job anywhere in the world at every possible time. Thus I didn't try to point it out, as it's also irrelevant to the qualit of directing (as to any artistic endeavour) which gender one identifies as.

I broadly agree with this sentiment, and I'm glad to hear this is your view! All I'll say in response is that although that view strikes you as self-evident, it won't be self-evident to your readers that this is your view if you use 'he/him/his' pronouns to refer to directors in general as in "the art of a director, his job is directing." There is a school of thought that says 'he/him' pronouns can be used as gender-neutral or universal, but I don't subscribe to that school and 'they/them' would be more agreeable to me. To be clear, I don't mean this as a moral criticism. It's more of an accessibility request, as a (trans) woman member of this forum. But it's your decision.

I'm just a lazy writer, especially on forums and such, but 'they/them' seems like a good alternative I haven't given much thought to so far, so I'll try to remember and use that that in the future.

[wba2]

On the 'art of directing' point, I definitely misinterpreted you early, WBA, my apologies! I now see that you were not saying that directors are the defining authorial creative force behind any and all movies made but rather that directing is almost always an aspect of filmmaking and the job of directing is the one you most appreciate watching for and most find interesting to study. Which is totally, totally fair. Indeed, I might well feel the same way!

Yeah, that's basically it. I'm totally tuned towards towards focusing on what the director is doing at any given moment, even though I know and appreciate and try to follow all the other artistic aspects of a film as well (maybe a bit like focusing on the singer in a band, or such, if you're most drawn towards voices, etc). I like to think of the director in similar terms to a conductor. The conductor didn't write the music, and he doesn't play any of the instruments, but it is his interpretation we hear, not necessarily the composers (or the other performers), though all other artists combined might far surpass him in terms of "influence/importance/creative control" etc.
I guess it comes down to what you enjoy the most, or what gels with you the most, what part of the overall creatiuve process one finds most satisfying.

As I said earlier, if I'm sitting at the cinema, watching a film print (in great condition) I might even appreciate the light and the colors and all the qualities of that particular print being shown more than all other more clearly "obvious" endeavors in tellinga story when it comes to mainstream filmmaking. Of course in experimental cinema it is a bit more accepted, that the print itself and its projection might be one of the main attractions. But that's an interest I only developed gradually over the years after watching thousands of films at the cinema and starting to work as a projectionist. At the beginning, even though I was a voracious cinephile, I hardly even knew the differences between all the aspect ratios, let alone the intrinsic qualities of different film stock and processing procedures (let alone different kinds of projectors and projections).

Maybe it's because I did a bit of amateur directing myself as a teen and wanted to become a filmmaker when I was young, that this interest developed quite early (being primarily interested in the styles and work by easily identifiable "eccentrics" in commercial filmmaking like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, etc.) - though back then I still watched films through an arrogant and ambitious "aspiring diorector's" eye, which meant that I thoroughly criticised everything i did not like, did not understand, or was simply opposed to artistically. So I always watched a film thinking "how I would have done it", instead of being open and curious to what was actually happening on screen (and the myriad of possibilities of directing and of the artistic expression of a director). I still recall my first encounter with a film by Jess Franco, which I thought thoroughly inept, incompetent, unintelligible, unengaging (with certainly one of the worst directing in film I had ever had to witness). But that was of course a reaction by someone whose cinematic hero at the time was a guy like Tarkovsky. Nowadays I think Tarkovsky and Franco were basically on the same level of artistic (and directorial) genius - with a slight edge towards Franco, because he simply made far more outstanding films than Andrey, as his quantitative output was so incredible.

Of course one is still conditioned by former (cultural) experinece, no matter how open you try to be. But there are no rules in art, so of course there are nor rules in directing, and in what supposedly works and doesn't work.

[arkheia]

Seen: 11

1. Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)



2. Captain from Castile (1947)



3. I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (1951)



4. David and Bathsheba (1951)



5. Untamed (1955)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Didn't get to scour King's filmography as much I'd have liked — final test tonight, eep! — but I've now seen 6. A far cry from a favourite director of mine, but the colour photography and gangster-flick-parallels of Jesse James were appealing and A Yank in the R.A.F. features Betty Grable as a style icon and is an important document of WWII morale-booster movies.

1. Jesse James
2. A Yank in the R.A.F.

[flip]

good luck on your test! i watched hell harbor (1930) which was alternately fascinating (when no one was talking) and terrible (when anyone was), but i think i'll add it to my list. i might watch one more before tallying, so i might not post results until late today.

[flip]

like in a few of our recent polls, again we have a prolific director whose top films are all from a span of just a few years -- the top four henry king films come from just a four year period late in his career. the gunfighter is perhaps my favourite western, and twelve o'clock high one of my favourite war films, so i'm happy to see them do well:

results

1. The Gunfighter (1950) -- 21 pts
2. Twelve O'Clock High (1949) -- 14 pts
3. Captain from Castile (1947) -- 10 pts
4. Prince of Foxes (1949) -- 9 pts
5. Jesse James (1939) -- 7 pts
6. Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nellie (1952) -- 5 pts
6. Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) -- 5 pts
8. Tol'able David (1921) -- 4 pts
8. The Black Swan (1942) -- 4 pts
8. In Old Chicago (1937) -- 4 pts
8. State Fair (1933) -- 4 pts
12. Seventh Heaven (1937) -- 3 pts
12. David and Bathsheba (1951) -- 3 pts
12. A Yank in the RAF (1941) -- 3 pts
12. I'd Climb the Highest Mountain (1951) -- 3 pts
16. Romola (1924) -- 2 pts
16. The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) -- 2 pts
16. The Song of Bernadette (1943) -- 2 pts
16. Hell Harbor (1930) -- 2 pts
20. The Bravados (1958) -- 1 pt
20. Deep Waters (1948) -- 1 pt
20. Carousel (1956) -- 1 pt
20. Untamed (1955) -- 1 pt
20. Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) -- 1 pt

[Curtis, baby]

the gunfighter is perhaps my favourite western

Samesies, except minus the perhaps! That strikes me as almost bizarre. We've probably both (especially you) seen hundreds

[flip]

yeah, if i was forced to rank my favourite westerns, it would go in the #1 slot, only noncommital because i like so many westerns. i've never given any thought to my favourite war films, i guess i've seen a lot but it's not a genre i think about much, but twelve o'clock high would almost definitely rank in my top five, possibly #1 too.

[...]

At the least The Gunfighter should have had the kind of position in the genre High Noon had as a or even the top non-auteur example of the western. (regardless of whether one wants to argue for King or Zinneman as auteurs, just that it's pretty much a perfect example of a western that doesn't require any body of work or added history to appreciate.)

[flip]

one other comment about henry king and our poll results -- king directed seven best picture-nominated films, which ties him for sixth most of any director (behind william wyler, steven spielberg, john ford, martin scorsese and mervyn leroy). only one of those seven failed to get a vote in our poll -- that was wilson, king's woodrow wilson biopic (which is probably the weakest king film i've seen). the other six all got at least one vote, though only one ranked in our top five: state fair, in old chicago, alexander's ragtime band, the song of bernadette, twelve o'clock high, and love is a many-splendored thing.

[oscarwerner]

Nice. I`m also glad those two films did so well. I also like westerns all my life and seen a lot. Have seen many war films . "The gunfighter" is good western and i respect "twelve o'clock high" also very much as a war drama. I think both films look good in comparison with more modern cinema and Gregory Peck, who often just looked well in some films , gives solid perfomance in both films.

[flip]

up at letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-115/