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: 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: comedy masterpiece
Review: Carole Lombard and John Barrymore star in the wacky backstage comedy TWENTIETH CENTURY, one of the best films in Lombard's career.

Lily Garland (Carole Lombard) is an actress plucked from obscurity to become the protegee of a fanatical theatre director (John Barrymore), and he gradually falls in love with her. The feeling isn't mutual so Garland leaves for Hollywood and almost destroys his career. It's not until they meet again on the Twentieth Century Express that he traps her into returning to the stage in the most crafty of ways!

A delightful comedy, Barrymore gives a remarkable performance, perfectly complimenting Lombard's. Very fun.

Rating:
Summary: Had it not been for Capra
Review: I've always wondered: If Frank Capra had not made "It Happened One Night" the same year, would "Twentieth Century" have been a more revered comedy? Perhaps. Capra's "Night" had the superior charm, I think, but Twentieth Century had the sharpest bite, more laughes, and continues to give me the greater pleasure these many years later. It's time "Twentieth Century" takes its place with other movies in the Columbia Classics series.

Rating:
Summary: Great film with two great stars!
Review: Lombard, a classic film great, and John Barrymore make this movie wonderful. The attitudes and personalities they bring to the characters bring this story to life. Nobody except Lombard could have made the snooty character likeable. And although you tend to dislike what Barrymore's character is about, you can't help but love the way he brings it across for the audience. This film and "My Man Godfrey" are must-haves for any fan of Carole Lombard!

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.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Great film with two great stars!
Review: This one's just a bit overrated in my opinion. Just watched it a few days ago, after much anticipation, and I wanted to laugh more than I actually did. Mogul Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) molds neophyte actress Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into Lily Garland; after a brief and successful "partnership", Lily bolts after Jaffe becomes too smothering for her. Jaffee's career in theatre spirals down; just as he fears he will never see her again, they serendipitously end up on the same passenger train & Jaffe masterminds a way to trick her into signing a contract to do another show with him. Barrymore's portrayal of this tyrant is different in a good way; rather than overact, ranting and raving, he keeps it very dignified and in control (the "get the chalk" sequences are some of the funniest in the film). Carole Lombard is good, too--she gets to play two moods, actually, from quiet & hopeless Mildred to jaded and demanding Lily (another good moment is her fighting off Jaffe in her compartment with her little slipper feet)--and she looks utterly gorgeous--a couple of the gowns she wears will make men gasp. Yet, my main complaint is there just aren't as many genuinely funny or memorable moments as other screwball comedies, especially if you're comparing this to the set pieces in "It Happened One Night" and "The Awful Truth", or much later in the genre, "The Palm Beach Story." Also, those movies have wonderfully written secondary characters, and here they're rather poorly drawn--you have to go by body type to distinguish Jaffe's cronies, for example. Direction seems more stage-like, which may not be surprising, considering it was taken from a play, and the pacing is just OK. I fear I am concentrating too much on the negatives--it's a must for fans of the leads, and those who like the screwballs; I just expected a lot more.