Twentieth Century

Rating:
Summary: One of the first screwball comedies
Review: A fast-paced and hilarious screwball comedy. Howard Hawks directing Barrymore, Lombard and some great character actors ( with great dialogue by Ben Hecht) -- all this on a speeding train -- what more could you ask for?

Rating:
Summary: John Barrymore As...O.J.?
Review: Nobody gets decapitated, however, as the acronym here stands for Oscar Jaffe. Nearly 70 years after its premiere, TWENTIETH remains a perfect comedy and a wonderful, visually sumptuous movie. Director Howard Hawks' hand is evident, though subtly, in the many ingenious setups and camera movements. For the most part he's wisely content to let the play be the thing, blessed as he was with a brilliantly funny property and cast. You all know about Barrymore's ego-monster producer and Lombard as his diva-protege (she's scrumptious to look at throughout, and funny besides), but not enough has been written in praise of the crack support of perpetually-soused Roscoe Karns, Walter Connolly (for once playing something besides a millionaire or a city-room editor), Charles Lane and a particularly unforgettable Etienne Girardot. Of course, Barrymore outshines them all, with his 'iron-door' pronunciamentos, his acting out every role in the antebellum play he's staging, and even his deliberate (and very funny) enunciation of the name 'Max Mandelbaum'. They don't make 'em like this any more (actually, they didn't often make 'em this well back then, either). People just don't talk this fast in movies anymore, nor do comedies hurtle along at such a clip, despite all the fractured MTV-style editing techniques giving the illusion of speed & motion. And when they try to adopt this screwball style nowadays, it simply feels - and plays - false. But never mind all that. Why are you reading this when you could be watching the video??

Rating:
Summary: The greatest classic comedy no one has seen
Review: Of the great screen comedies from the Golden Age of the Hollywood Studio system, few are seen as rarely as TWENTIETH CENTURY. This is tragic for a number of reasons. First, this film is usually considered the first of the Screwball comedies that glorified the thirties and forties. Howard Hawks holds the unusual and unique distinction among the great directors of not only having mastered a huge number of genres but having actually invented several of them. In 1932 he invented the gangster film with his great classic SCARFACE. In 1950, he created the alien Sci-fi film, when he directed (without credit, though the credited director Christian Nyby always acknowledged that Hawks actually directed) THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. He also made significant contributions to a host of other genres, including the detective film (THE BIG SLEEP), the adventure film (TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT), and the Western (RED RIVER). He not only invented the Screwball comedy with TWENTIETH CENTURY in 1934, he went on to direct two of the greatest Screwball comedies ever in BRINGING UP BABY and HIS GIRL FRIDAY. No other director in the history of film had Hawks's gifts as an originator of new types of film or his range as a director.

Another problem with this film being shown so rarely is that it keeps us from seeing two of the greatest performers in American cinema, John Barrymore near the end of his star career and Carole Lombard near the beginning of hers. This was one of the very last films Barrymore made before the years of heavy drinking began to catch up with him. After he made this film, his remarkably handsome features began to fade, and for the last few years of his career he specialized in playing comic drunks. This he did exceedingly well, but more because it was the only kind of role left for him to play. But here, in this film, we get the real John Barrymore for one last, great role. Lombard had made a gigantic number of films in the twenties and the early thirties, but it was only with this film that she became an "A List" actress. From this point on, she would be regarded as one of if not the greatest screen comedienne, and would be in some of the finest comedies ever made until her premature death in 1942.

The plot is simple: Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffe's (Barrymore) career had been on a long slide since his greatest discovery, Lily Garland, has departed the stage for stardom in Hollywood. They accidentally meet on the Twentieth Century Limited, and he decides play every trick in the book to get her back into his life, both professionally and otherwise. The script is exceedingly witty, and was a reworking of a stage play written by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur, whose work Hawks would film again in 1940 in HIS GIRL FRIDAY. The tight, terse, fast-moving dialogue that we associate with Hecht and Macarthur are evident at every point in TWENTIETH CENTURY. Between Hawks's deft direction, Barrymore and Lombard's performances (as well as the work of several crack character actors such as Walter Connolly), and such a superb script, this film was can't-miss from the start.

A bit of trivia: Howard Hawks and Carole Lombard were second cousins.