I found this article very interesting as well. Just as the Billy Wilder interview made me want to see more Billy Wilder films, this article made me want to watch more Howard Hawks movies. I think the only work of his I've seen is The Big Sleep.
I was impressed with how many genres Hawks has made films in - westerns, thrillers, sci-fi, musicals, etc, and also impressed by the author's observation that all of these films fall into one of two categories, they're all either adventure dramas or crazy comedies.
You would think that being of the same director, all the films would share some basic elements, but what the article pointed out was actually the opposite. Hawks' adventure dramas have characteristics that are in direct opposition to the characteristics of his crazy comedies. His adventure dramas feature strong, individualistic men and portray women as outsiders that can never really become part of the group. Conversely his comedies feature weak men who are dominated by women.
Similarly, Ford's films all involve dichotomies between wilderness and civilization, and between nomads and settlers.
I thought Renoir's way of putting it was very interesting, that the auteur essentially makes one film over his whole life and it is only in the context of this one big film that each individual film can be fully understood.
As with several of the other articles, I found the fact that the last sentence of every page was cut off to be extremely frustrating.
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