The movies of Howard Hawks give as much pleasure as those of any filmmaker. But the price is often a heavy dose of didacticism, an endless if narrow discussion of what makes a man a man (taciturn virility and a refusal to acknowledge death) and a woman a woman (getting along with men is essential). Add to that a curious paradox in which individualism is honored only within the context of teamwork, and Hawks (1896–1977) can sometimes pall. His dramas have little tolerance for outsiders, rebels, and eggheads. In his comedies, however, eccentricity is prized and conformity scorned, which is why I prefer “Bringing Up Baby” (1938) to “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939). I keep hoping Rita Hayworth’s character in “Only Angels” will get the hell out of the jungle before Cary Grant’s team turns her into an acceptable pod person.

The Hawks films I treasure most are those privileged productions that straddle the line between comedy and drama so successfully that they upend the formats that superficially define them. No one matches Hawks’s legerdemain in this kind of alchemy. It isn’t a matter of injecting comic relief into drama (as John Ford did), or switching from comic setup to dramatic denouement (Leo McCarey), or leavening tension with macabre mischief (Alfred Hitchcock), or deflating gravitas with sarcasm (John Huston), but rather beginning with an intrinsically irreverent attitude, so that drollery is the governing mode interrupted by bursts of adrenaline-raising action relief.

“Scarface,” “The Big Sleep,” “To Have and Have Not,” and “Rio Bravo” follow the precepts of, respectively, the gangster, detective, adventure, and Western genres, yet Hawks and company approached them with a cheerful, sexual impertinence that resituated them in a separate terrain, where they had more in common with one another than with the genres. They are connected not least by Hawks’s frequent self-plagiarism; memorable bits and lines in “Rio Bravo,” for example, were previously used in “Only Angels Have Wings” and “To Have and Have Not.” But these echoes now augment the familiarity and out-of-time constancy of Hawks’s world.

“Scarface” (1932) and “Rio Bravo” (1959), his first and last masterpieces in the sound era, have recently been released on DVD, and today they are joined by his war film, “Air Force” (1943), one of his most effective — or least didactic — studies in group dynamics. They form a cogent if unintended trilogy, tracing the evolution of his themes and storytelling techniques.

Hawks’s contribution to the gangster cycle, “Scarface,” came on the heels of 1931’s “Little Caesar” and “The Public Enemy,” lively, if moralistic, episodes in charismatic brutality that he trumped with the vitality of his directorial style, the theatrical performances, literary wit, Jacobean violence, and authentic music — the fabled bandleader Gus Arnheim can be glimpsed in the great nightclub scene.

“Scarface” is a farcical Pilgrim’s Progress about an ape-like assassin, Tony Carmonte (a career-making performance by Paul Muni), who whistles while he works, murdering his way to the top with a “portable” machine gun and a gang that includes a smooth, coin-flipping gunman (George Raft) and a simpleton “secretary” (Vince Barnett) who can’t take a phone message. Tony’s animal magnetism attracts Poppy (Karen Morley), though he would rather spend off-hours with his sister Cesca, played by an effervescent Ann Dvorak.

A scene in a newspaper editor’s office, added to mollify censors and not directed by Hawks, has the unintended virtue of justifying the film’s stylized violence. “Scarface” is not intended to edify, except as an example of shrewd filmmaking, with its long tracking shots, chiaroscuro lighting, and visual shorthand, including a motif worked out with co-writer Ben Hecht, in which each murder is signaled by a decorative X. All three of the key early gangster films make much ado about sexual confusion, but “Scarface” raises the stakes in homoeroticism, sadomasochism, and incest.

In “Air Force,” Hawks limits the laughs to sweet-humored bits involving George Tobias and Edward Brophy. Dudley Nichols’s screenplay, which tracks the bomber “Mary Ann” from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor to the Coral Sea, is airtight, and Hawks’s control of the material allows us to know all 10 members of the crew, including the outcast (John Garfield) who soon changes his tune. The film makes inspired use of two FDR speeches, but also spreads a lot of nonsense about fifth columnists in Hawaii. The cinematography by James Wong Howe emphasizes gleaming reflections and shadings associated with classic portrait photographers.

As a favor, William Faulkner wrote what Hawks considered one of the film’s best scenes—the death of the pilot, hallucinating one last takeoff on the “Mary Ann.” The scene is powerful but disturbing, because we earlier witnessed the pilot (charmingly played by John Ridgely) in a farewell clinch with his wife (Ann Doran), who gave him a lucky pendant made by their son. In an absolutely superb cameo, Doran suggests sexual urgency while uttering the quintessential Hawksian definition of a good relationship: “It’s been fun, every minute of it, such good fun.”

So when the pilot dies, it’s disconcerting to see that he thinks only of the plane. The scene might be read as a comment on how war dehumanizes, especially if taken in tandem with a notorious line uttered by the always congenial George Tobias character: Having proved himself a softie by sneaking a dog on board, he remarks of a downed enemy plane, “Hey Joe, fried Jap going down.” The closing battle, incorporating actual Coral Sea combat footage, would seem to underscore that point, going on for a pummeling 10 minutes, with inserts of burning Japanese sailors.

“Air Force” is one of the very few good war films made during the war. Unfortunately, the DVD extras amplify period nostalgia and add no historical perspective — the Mary Ann and her crew were destroyed a year after the film came out.

“Rio Bravo” is a miraculous film, and Warner Bros.’s two-disc DVD pays proper homage to it and to Hawks; it includes Richard Schickel’s celebrated 1973 documentary about the director, as well as a new featurette.

The pleasures of “Rio Bravo” are easy to talk about, but harder to explain. After the astonishing four-minute silent opening, in which the two central characters and the main plot are elucidated, the film has three or four action scenes separated by long intervals of leisurely walking, verbose talking, and stock-character comedy, all played at a deliberatively slow pace. Yet it is a grand and mesmerizing entertainment, a character study that creates its own world — emotionally, temporally, spatially.

Dean Martin’s alcoholic Dude centers the story and motivates the action, but John Wayne’s authoritative sheriff magnificently dominates the film. The ongoing joke is that Wayne’s implacable character would be dead several times over but for the help of Dude, Walter Brennan’s cranky old gimp Stumpy, Ricky Nelson’s callow but tuneful gunman Colorado, and, in her one indelible role, Angie Dickenson as Feathers, who seduces the Sherriff with single-entendre directness.

Martin idolized Wayne in real life, and his regard is a central element in the picture’s overall appeal — his look of admiration and of pride when “Papa” tells him he did something “good.” Wayne is flawless, at times balletic. Note the loving look on his face as he walks into the jail to tell Dude he’s “getting a little touchy,” and the sheepish look in the next scene, as he slowly ambles over to Feathers, the one character who unsettles him.

Most filmmakers would have had her rush out after the climactic battle to embrace him while Dude herds the bad guys, ending the film on an action high note. Not Hawks: He added another eight minutes to amplify their relationship and closed with Dude and Stumpy strolling into the fantasy world of incandescent Hollywood, where everyone ends up content and whole.

Mr. Giddins is the author of “Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books.”