Spawn of the North (Henry Hathaway 1938)

As part of my ongoing Henry Hathaway project (thus will be my fourth post on him) I have decided to write about Spawn of the North, a film of his from 1938.

There are many striking things about Spawn of the North but perhaps the most appealing thing is its leisurely pace, and attention to character and location. It is set in Alaska and is about a small fishing village, and the conflict between poachers and honest fishermen. But the actual story takes the back seat. The film begins with about five minutes of wildlife footage of fish, birds and bears, and then we are introduced to the main characters, Tyler Dawson (George Raft) and Jim Kimmerlee (Henry Fonda.) Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff and John Barrymore are also in the film. But even when they are introduced there is no story in particular. For the first half hour it is unclear what the film is supposed to be about. Then a particular plot starts to develop and the two friends are pitted against each other, as Jim wants to be an honest man whereas Tyler gets mixed up with poachers and even killers.

But the question "What is it really about?" is the wrong question to ask, because it is obvious from the beginning that it is about this place, at this time, and the people in it. It has a very authentic feel to it, it is hard to know whether it was shot on real locations, or on a purpose-built set (according to imdb.com it was partly shot in Alaska) but it does not really matter, since what matters is that it feels genuine. The cinematography by Charles Lang, Hathaway's regular companion, is not as surreal or impressionistic as in some of there other films together, but it captures the beauty of the setting, and it is shot with great depth of field. The camera is also somewhat unstable, swaying with the waves, which adds even more to the genuine feel of the film. It is also a brutal and emotional film, for example a nightly ambush on the fishermen by some salmon thieves is surprisingly bloody and raw.

The film does not feel like if it was from 1938 and this is an important aspect of the film. It feels like if it should have been influenced by films of the 1940s, such as neorealism and Roberto Rossellini. But it is not. It is instead a typical Hathaway film, although far from the conventional idea of what a Hollywood film is (was) like. This is not to imply that Hathaway was unusually ahead of his time but rather that the idea, this ideal type, of Hollywood cinema so often is narrow-minded and faulty. Admittedly the set-up, with two friends ending up on opposite sides of the law and being torn apart by having to fight each other, when they really love each other, is common enough, but the film, as suggested, is not about the story, the narrative, but about character and place, and the film is taking full advantage of the setting.

For anybody interested in studies of authorship, Spawn of the North lends itself naturally. It is the kind of story and milieu that Raoul Walsh would have enjoyed working with but had he made it it would not be so slow and not as interested in community as this one is. The pacing and the community is typically for Hathaway. He has always shown more interest in character and in making beautiful compositions than in propelling a story, and Spawn of the North is no different. Hathaway is less focused on forward-motion than Walsh, instead Hathaway can spend ten minutes on "nothingness" or, better, stillness.

There is also a connection to another filmmaker more interested in characters than story, Howard Hawks, especially since the film is co-written by Jules Furthman and Talbot Jennings. Furthman worked with Hawks on about six films (it depends on how you count), some of which are Hawks's very best. But Spawn of the North would not be mistaken for a Hawks any more than a Walsh. The pictorial beauty is much more elaborate than in Hawks's own work, and the interactions between the characters are nothing like in a film by Hawks, nor is the world-view that is expressed.

To some extent Spawn of the North is a strange film. Who would be the intended audience? I could easily see how people would get bored since very little happens, until the very end. I would imagine that the general interest in the history of salmon fishing in Alaska was rather low. This is not a film I would necessarily recommend to everybody, even if it has plenty of humour, beauty and empathy, and the acting of Henry Fonda. Yet the very things that might make it uninteresting for some is also what makes it so interesting for a film scholar such as myself. It is a seminal film in Hathaway's career (and in his creative partnership with Charles Lang) and rather memorable. One wonders what André Bazin would have made of it.

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My previous pieces on Hathaway:
General introduction here.
After-thoughts here.
Collection of additional online material here.
A new piece, about Souls at Sea.

Cinematographers

"You have to understand the nature of light."

In my thesis I argue that the look of Hasse Ekman's films vary depending which cinematographer he worked with. The films he made together with masters such as Göran Strindberg and Sven Nykvist, and Gösta Roosling, are on a completely different level than the rest (which were often shot by Martin Bodin and Hilding Bladh). Ekman had an idea and a style, so you would not mistake a film by Ekman for a film by Bergman even if they would have the same cinematographer, but you will still be able to tell which of Ekman's films were shot by Strindberg and which were shot by Bladh for example.

When it comes to artists in film I think cinematographers are among the most important, and it is a shame that they, like so many other contributors, are often neglected by critics and scholars. Once I heard about an essay written about Gordon Willis and Carlo di Palma's work with Woody Allen. I got very excited that somebody was considering their vital contributions and I said to the writer that I thought Willis could light a set better than most. She replied that she did not know anything about lighting. She did not even know that this is what cinematographers do. I struggled to keep a straight face... But this is often the case. If you are not somebody really famous like Sven Nykvist or Jack Cardiff you seldom get any light shone on you, even though you yourself spend most of your time lighting others.

"Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem."

One of the greatest of all cinematographers, John Alton, has written a book called Painting With Light and that is what they do. The work of a good cinematographer (or DP - director of photography) can elevate the quality of a film far above the level of the script and the direction. A cinematographer, much like a director or a writer, can put his or her own individual mark on a film. Alton is an example of this, but there are others too. To name one example, the films Billy Wilder made with John F. Seitz look different from the ones Wilder made with Charles Lang. The films shot by Seitz have a harsher look, more clearly defined contrasts between white and black then those Wilder and Lang did together. But then again, the films that Lang did with Henry Hathaway look very different from than ones he made with Wilder.

"You are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward."

Different DPs have their own fields that they work within. William Wyler preferred to have his films shot with extraordinary depth of field so he liked to work with Gregg Toland, beginning in 1936, who was an expert on that. They made seven films together, pushing the medium as far as it would go, much like John Ford would do with Toland on The Long Voyage Home (1940) and to a lesser extent on The Grapes of Wrath (1940). The following year Toland also worked with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane (1941). When Wyler made The Heiress (1949) he was unhappy about having to work with Leo Tover instead, who was not as good as Toland.

Speaking of Citizen Kane, it is worth pointing out that many innovations in film art have been made by cinematographers. One example is the above mentioned John F. Seitz, who took out 18 different patents during the course of his career. Another key innovator was James Wong Howe, the former boxer who became an ace cameraman. Among the things he is famous for his expressive use of deep focus on Transatlantic (William K. Howard 1931) and for using handheld cameras, while on roller skates, on Body and Soul (Robert Rossen 1947). Howe also wrote an article, The Cameraman Talks Back, because he was upset about the lack of recognition for his work, and that of his peers. The article also gives a good overview of what a cinematographer does. One of my favourites in Howe's oeuvre is Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick 1957), which looks absolutely fantastic. It too might have influenced the French New Wave, not least its scenes out on streets or in bars feels similar.

There were two key cinematographers of the French New Wave, Henri Decaë and Raoul Coutard. Decaë had made documentaries and short films, and preferred to work outdoors with handheld cameras. That way of working he brought with him when he began shooting films first with Jean-Pierre Melville (such as Bob le flambeur (1956) and later as part of the French New Wave. The most famous example is probably The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups, François Truffaut 1959) but he also worked with Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol. But perhaps even more important was Coutard. He was cinematographer on films such as Breathless (A bout de souffle, Jean-Luc Godard 1960), Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste, Truffaut 1960), Lola (Jacques Demy 1961) and Vivre sa vie (Godard 1961). Coutard and Godard worked together for several decades, and hence they are among the key couples in film history. Other important cinematographer/director relationships are Robert Burks and Alfred Hitchcock, Chris Doyle and Wong Kar-Wai, Agnes Godard and Claire Denis, Gunnar Fischer/Sven Nykvist and Ingmar Bergman and Billy Bitzer and D.W. Griffith. But some actors also form professional relationships with cinematographers, such as Greta Garbo with William H. Daniels (they did 22 films together and he clearly had a part in creating her aura and her fame).

This has not been a technical post but you can talk at great length about lenses, the film speed, candela and such, but that can wait for another day. Today the aim was just to celebrate their work.

"There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job."

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All the quotes are from Conrad Hall, one of the great masters. He was a treasured legend among cinematographers, and active all the way up to his death, in 2003. His last film was also one of his best: Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes 2002).

This post is based on one I wrote several years ago for my Swedish film blog. It has been slightly amended 2014-03-07.

Henry Hathaway (part 3)

I wrote a post about Henry Hathaway last summer (link here) and I began by saying that very little had been written about him, and that he was not in the least appreciated as much as he should be. Since then I have seen ever more of his films and become more impressed by his talents and his consistency. Let me just mention two films today, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and Souls at Sea (1937), as being among his very best. Souls at Sea is especially impressive visually. The immense depth of field, the low ceilings and the alternations between small cramped spaces with, almost unnaturally, vast spaces are as impressive as in Citizen Kane (1941, i.e. made four years later) and I think it is about time to say that the working relationship between Henry Hathaway and cinematographer Charles Lang is one of the most important and artistically satisfying partnerships in cinema history.

I will eventually elaborate on that later on but for now I will just post links to a collection of online material about him. These are essays, reviews and comments that in some way are related to him or his films. I might not agree with everything they say, but they all bring something valid to the discussion.

The first one is by Dan Sallitt, who primarily discusses Home in Indiana (1944) and From Hell to Texas (1958).

This is a short piece by Richard T. Jameson about Hathaway in general.

Hathaway has not got his own entry at Senses of Cinema, but there is an essay there, by Pedro Blas Gonzalez, about Seven Thieves (1960).

Mike Grost has a summary of common features in Hathaway's films on his website.

And finally, a favourite. In 1965 Joan Didion wrote an essay about John Wayne (John Wayne: a Love Song), but since it is mostly about the making of Hathaway's The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) it deserves to be included here as well.

For those who want to read on paper, there are overviews of Hathaway's career in Jean-Pierre Coursodon and Pierre Sauvage's American Directors Volume 1 and in the first volume of World Film Directors, edited by John Wakeman.

And here are my two earlier posts on Hathaway:
http://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/08/henry-hathaway.html
http://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/08/henry-hathaway-afterthoughts.html
2013-08-04, yet another of my writing on Hathaway: http://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.se/2012/06/spawn-of-north-henry-hathaway-1938.html
A new piece, about Souls at Sea.