Sunday, December 12, 2010

The richest director ever

I have no source to back up that title, but I'd be rather surprised if anyone beats Howard Hughes. Tonight I watched both films he directed, Hell's Angels and The Outlaw.

The best parts of Angels happen in the air, no doubt about that. It's thrilling to see two dozen or so biplane fighters swirling in the sky and know that it's real footage, not CGI. Hughes assembled a small fleet of WWI warplanes and pilots and shot a lot of film, which made the movie the most expensive ever made at the time. There's also some fine model work, used in the nighttime Zeppelin mission over London and the bombing of a German munitions depot. The rest of the film is uneven, to put it kindly, but Jean Harlow is good - good at being a bad girl, that is. Only a few years later the Hays Code prevented this kind of racy material being shown.

The Outlaw is famous for showcasing Jane Russell's breasts and being censored because of that, and her chest is indeed the most memorable element of the movie (her acting, sadly, less so). It's a retelling of the Billy the Kid legend that inserts Doc Holliday in the events, and not a terribly good one at that. There are some good scenes, but more ridiculous ones. At least Walter Huston, father of John, appears as Pat Garrett.

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