Fordian or Hawksian? That’s the kind of question I’d love to see ricochet around Facebook, where I’ve been asked what 80s movie I am, what Renaissance painter I am, and so on. It’s an allegiance that film buffs have been asked to declare since the auteur theory made inroads in the U.S. and the primacy of the director as the author of a movie was (somewhat) established. In other words, do you worship at the altar of John Ford, who, when asked to introduce himself at a Screen Directors Guild conference on communist infiltration in the bad old days of McCarthyism, is said to have replied, “I’m John Ford. I make Westerns”? The John Ford who, when Orson Welles was asked who the top three film directors were, responded, “John Ford, John Ford and John Ford”? Or is your god Howard Hawks, the great dabbler, whose film classics of every stripe include Scarface (1932), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946)? Who made just a handful of Westerns, but directed two of the best, 1948’s Red River and 1959’s Rio Bravo?

The new Paramount Centennial Collection releases of Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Hawks’ El Dorado (1967) won’t settle any arguments, but backed up by strong, anamorphically enhanced transfers and excellent supplements they do showcase the filmmakers in the best possible light. By the 60s, Ford and Hawks were grand old men of the cinema, who were finally beginning to bask in the critical adulation they had long received by cineastes abroad. Ford won four Oscars, more than any other director, but was never taken all that seriously at home—after all, he made Westerns, then considered a frivolous genre. The wins were all for non-Westerns, including The Informer (1935), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). Hawks, criminally, received just one Oscar nomination, for York, and got the gold watch of an honorary statuette in 1975. One thing they had in common in the twilight of their careers: Once the studio system that helped them flourish commercially collapsed, they had to look around for work. So they took the path of least resistance, by heading to Paramount and saddling up with John Wayne, who in the 60s had a long-term contract with the studio that yielded a string of solidly successful pictures. (more…)