Hawks Marathon: His Girl Friday (1940)

 Back in my review for Twentieth Century, which is credited as the birth of the screwball comedy and which I didn't like, I mentioned that I wasn't sure I liked screwball comedies, and part of that belief, though I didn't express it there, was I remember being disappointed by His Girl Friday, which is maybe the most definitive screwball comedy there is.

I hadn't watched the movie in some amount of years.  I know I watched it while I was still at school, which means it was - dear god - at least six years ago.  So when I clicked play on His Girl Friday, I was both worried and curious.  I was eager to see it again because I wanted an answer to this vague feeling of disappointment I remember and worried because I truly did want to like a movie almost nobody dislikes.

I have no fucking idea what younger me was disappointed by.  I have been completely swayed in the opposite direction upon a rewatch.  His Girl Friday is an amazing movie - one of the best movies of all time - and I respect myself less for ever feeling that way.

In my defense, His Girl Friday was my first screwball comedy.  I truly didn't know what I was getting into when I watched it.  I'm much better prepared now.  Also, it is definitely funny, but any older comedy is not necessarily going to get the laughs you'd expect from its reputation.  I think I was really just expecting the movie to be a nonstop laugh riot without fully realizing that a movie made in 1940 isn't ever going to do that to a young 20 something guy.

I don't know if I'm alone in that opinion.  Even the truly best comedies from before a certain time period tend to only get a mild chuckle every now and then from me.  Which is why the comedies that stand the test of time have more going for it than just humor.

And boy does His Girl Friday have more going for it than humor.  The dialogue is insane.  Just witty remark after witty remark after witty remark with no breaks to breathe.  It's nonstop.  There is no soundtrack.  The dialogue is the soundtrack.  There's not even room to have a soundtrack because every space available is filled with words.

Even though I said my disappointment with His Girl Friday - at least I theorize this is why - is partially expecting a laugh riot, it is truly funny.  Cary Grant got me to laugh with his reaction shots multiple times in this movie.  Yes, with as good of dialogue as His Girl Friday has, Grant just reacting is what made me laugh most.

Also funny: Billy Gilbert as Pettibone, who is not in that much of the movie, but seems to have pitch perfect comedic timing in his two scenes, and he nearly steals the movie.  But of course, he doesn't, because Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell exist and nobody can steal the movie from them two.

Hawks wanted to break a record with this movie by having the most words per minute and he actually timed it to make sure it would.  And it shows.  You have to give this movie your absolute full attention.  You can't even fold laundry to this movie.  You will miss something.  And I'm sure you'll pick up something new each time you watch it.  It's impossible not to miss things, the movie moves so fast.

This is probably the movie where Hawks' directorial talent most shines through I think.  Hawks wanted his hand to be invisible when directing and for the most part, he accomplishes that.  Just from a purely technical standpoint, it feels like anybody could have directed his movies.  I know that's not true.  But he directs movies very straightforwardly.

But here, I noticed the extreme difficulty it would have taken to film these scenes, because the camera always has to be on someone talking and people are talking so fast, it's genuinely impressive we can follow both the action and what people are saying.  This is from a time when they had to have multiple microphones just to pick up every sound they could.  It really should have been nominated for something sound-related.  Or anything at all, but it wasn't nominated for anything.

And as it turns out, I have actually written about this movie six years ago.  On this site.  I will not post it because I do not stand by it, but my main contention was that I didn't find it funny.  My instincts were correct.  So I definitely found it funnier on rewatch.  Back then, I gave the movie 3 stars.  I will be revising that grade for my rewatch.

4/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: The Big Sky (1952)

The Big Sky is a Howard Hawks movie undistinguished enough to fly under the radar and be posted on Dailymotion.  It is not really a movie I'd have ever come across and even think to watch if not for the Howard Hawks marathon.

Upon further reflection, The Big Sky does have some accolades though.  Jonathan Rosenbaum, an influential film critic, listed it as one of the 100 greatest movies not including in the American Film Institute's Top 100 movies. 

It also has two Oscar nominations, one for the best black-and-white cinematography and one for best supporting actor.  This is notable only in the sense that Hawks' movies are notoriously shut out of the Academy Awards.  Not necessarily for the acting nomination, but at the least the cinematography would suggest something.

In the end though, The Big Sky is fairly unmemorable.  This is a movie that I will forget everything about in a year.  I know this because I watched this last week and had to read the Wikipedia summary to remember this movie.

It's fine.  It is not a movie you regret watching, but as I said, it's not particularly memorable.  This is a movie with a relatively simple plot and because of that, the movie feels longer than its two hour runtime.  They seek to trade with Indians who normally refuse to trade with outsiders, but they bring along the daughter of a chief who had escaped an enemy tribe as an "in."

That's the plot.  They have struggles along the way.  They're trying to reach the Blackfoot Indians before the Missouri Fur Company does, which was a real company founded by, among others, Lewis Clark of Lewis and Clark, although it was dissolved before the events of this movie.

Because this is a movie, various events end up putting the daughter, whose name is Teal Eyes, and the two main characters, played by Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin, closer together.  Love triangle is a bit strong, but both end up vying for her affection.  This is a weakness because, well, she doesn't speak English. 

One-time actress Elizabeth Threatt, who apparently had affairs with both Hawks and Douglas before this movie, was really the daughter of a Native American.  So score one for casting on this one because that was extremely rare for 1952 for a leading role.  Now, Threatt really is beautiful, but the whole "she can't speak English part" - it's kind of where I stop believing in any future romance between these characters.  They literally can't communicate with each other and evidently fall in love.

Not to mention, I'm supposed to believe that she gets over the fact that Martin's character carries a fucking Native American scalp around with him.  Or just his hair.  Like I just don't think this is a thing she would get over, even though he didn't personally kill this Indian.  Anyway, she works towards stealing this from him and even trying to kill him, and then it's like a light switch flips, and she's in love.

There is one very good part about this movie and it's the Oscar nominated actor.  Arthur Hunnicutt is incredible in this movie.  He has such an authoritative voice.  Think Sam Elliot.  And he is completely convincing in this movie.  Well deserved nomination.  He appears in a future Hawks Western and I'll hope he'll be as good in that movie as he is here.

The Big Sky is fine.  It features a not all that convincing love story, but simple plot or no, the story is interesting and features a great supporting performance.  I'm just sure I'll end up forgetting all about this movie.

2.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: To Have and Have Not (1944)

To Have and Have Not occupies a weird space for me.  My brain formed an expectation of what the movie was based off... now that I think about it, very little.  Pretty much the only thing I knew about this movie was that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had a steamy romance while it was filming mirroring the romance in the movie.

And in a way, that is what happens.  Bogart's character meets Bacall's characters and they have a battle of wits of sorts, mostly because that was pretty much the only way to build sexual tension in the 1940s without violating the Production Code.

Except that the movie is barely about the romance or budding romance as it were.  A lot of it is about the development of Harry Morgan from an apolitical guy uninterested in fighting to a man willing to fight for the resistance.  Hawks claims that he wasn't really interested in being political and the focus of the movie was the relationship.

Whatever his intentions, that doesn't really come across.  I mean sure the relationship is not an unimportant part of the movie or anything, but it really seems like the majority of the plot is about Bogart's progression as a character.  To me anyway. 

I find the development of To Have and Have Not pretty fascinating.  It was made in the middle of World War II about a period of time before the Americans joined the war based on a book that had nothing to do with World War II.  

First off, it is astounding how many movies set or about World War II were made while World War II was happening.  Hollywood moved much, much quicker back in the day.  Americans weren't involved in World War II for that long, less than four years.  

To Have and Have Not was based on a book by Ernest Hemingway.  Except that it was purposefully made by Hawks because he told Hemingway that he could make a good movie out of Hemingway's worst book, which he believed was To Have and Have Not.  The original story was set in Cuba, but featured an unfavorable portrayal of the Cuban government which violated the Good Neighbor policy.

William Faulkner was hired to rewrite the initial screenplay and changed the setting to France, and during World War II.  So to say the movie deviates from the novel would be an understatement.  So Hemingway wrote the novel, Jules Furthman wrote the original draft, and Faulkner wrote the finished draft, making this possibly the greatest collection of writers to contribute to a movie ever.

Hawks wanted to model the success of Casablanca by basically aping it.  The movie got mixed reviews with the negative ones saying it was a rip-off of Casablanca.  Which was essentially Hawks' intention.  I haven't seen Casablanca in a long, long time, so I can't really comment on this.  Parts of it certainly reminded me of Casablanca, but it didn't feel like I was watching the same movie thankfully.  But again, I don't have a great memory of Casablanca (which I did love when I did watch it)

The acting is all great.  That's to be expected of course.  I'm not entirely sure how old Bacall was supposed to be in this movie, but she definitely plays older.  She was 19 at the time of filming which blows my mind.  It's no surprise Bogart is good since he was immediately cast.  Hell, his character was probably written with him in mind.  And Walter Brennan shows up yet again in a Hawks production and there's a reason he kept getting cast by Hawks.

To Have and Have Not is one of those films that amazes me in how it was ever good.  Only 36 pages of the script were written when filming began, so Faulkner had to re-write nearly the entire movie on the fly.  Hawks would change some of the dialogue the day of filming.  I don't know it just always shocks me when movies are made with the plan being "it'll get done, don't worry about it right now."

Maybe one day I'll do a Casablanca/To Have and Have Not watch back-to-back to see just how similar the movies feel, but for now I'll just appreciate To Have and Have Not as its own movie.  I think I just really like the resistance sideplot/mainplot with the romance being the "real" story.  I mean they certainly make enough of the same movies, it's not like the Casablanca plot is repeated ad nauseam and it is a genuinely great setting for a movie. 

3.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Ball of Fire (1941)

The old Hollywood system operated under one assumption: you were there to see Cary Grant or Bette Davis or whoever the lead actor was.  They gave the most popular actors the best projects.  It doesn't really work that way anymore, because people don't really see movies for the actors.  Not to say it never happens, but it doesn't drive public interest.  Movie stars don't really exist in the way movie stars use to exist.

I say all that because for the first time, I understand that phenomenon.  Oh sure, I may think I'm more likely to like a movie because somebody's in it, but they aren't really the driving factor.  I'm more of a "is the movie good?  Okay, I'll see it." guy.  But Ball of Fire crystallized something: I want to watch anything Barbara Stanwyck is in.

I am not kidding you.  This is one of the absolute greatest things about how the old Hollywood system worked.  Stanwyck was a star forever and she always got the best projects so there are a ton of movies that I'm naturally going to watch with her in it anyway.  But I want to watch every movie.

By pure coincidence, I ended up watching three Stanwyck movies in the span of about a month.  I watched Baby Face, Remember the Night, and Ball of Fire.  She is fan-fucking-tastic in every one of those movies.   I loved the latter two movies in fact.  (Baby Face is solid, but more notable for what it got away with pre-Hollywood code)

Opposite her in Ball of Fire is Gary Cooper.  I haven't been much of a fan of Cooper in the movies I've seen so far, but he's well deployed here.  Whatever hadn't clicked for me before clicks in this movie.  He plays a good and believable straight-laced character.  Shockingly, I also didn't find it hard to believe Cooper was some nerdy bookworm either.

Here's the premise.  A collection of experts in their field all live together in the service of writing a new and up to date encyclopedia.  All of them are men and all of them are bachelors, purposefully away from any distractions such as women.  With the exception of Cooper, they are old men.

The old men are played by veteran character actors of the day.  Look at each of their IMDB pages, and every one of them has well over 100 credits with careers dating back to silent film.  That experience is certainly felt in the performances which are all good and refined despite not a whole lot of characterization for most of them.

Cooper is a grammarian of the group.  But when he talks with a garbage man, he finds he doesn't understand the slang.  Which means his part of the encyclopedia would be hopelessly out of date.  So he goes out in the town and recruits people to help teach him new slang, one of the recruits being a nightclub performer on the run from the cops.  That nightclub performer is Barbara Stanwyck.

So what you have here is a very classic screwball comedy setup.  Stanwyck is supposed to be married to a gangster so she can't testify against him, but he's trying to stay hidden.  So she needs to stay hidden until they meet.  When Cooper comes along, she jumps at the chance to hide out at the place all the old men are living until she can meet the gangster.

Which proves not particularly difficult since all the old men are excited, understandably, about having Barbara freaking Stanwyck around.  Cooper is very, VERY old school though and is the only one against it, but he's also the only younger guy so of course he falls in love with her and she with him.

But a lot of fun stuff happens in between all that.  Ball of Fire is just delightfully fun to watch.  I had a grin on my face for most of the movie.  A screwball comedy done well is one of the most enjoyable film experiences you can have.  It's just incredibly hard to do.

4/4 stars 

Hawks Marathon: Red River (1948)

Howards Hawks is mostly known for making a wide variety of genres, but if you had to boil it down more specifically, he's know for the screwball comedy first and the Western second.  In the first half of his career, he made many screwball comedies, and he even incorporated the screwball element in his other works.

Near as I can tell, he had not made a true Western in his first 20 years as a filmmaker, and then made five in his last 24 years as a filmmaker.  And I'm guessing a large reason why is because of John Wayne, who was the lead actor in all of his Westerns, with one exception, and starred in five movies directed by Hawks.

Red River is a bit long, and it takes a while until the real meat of the movie happens.  The movie is about the tension between John Wayne's character, Thomas Dunson, and his adopted son and protegé, Matt Garth.  The tension arises while on a long voyage to sell cattle. Dunson grows increasingly hostile and paranoid, leading to some less than stellar leadership decisions.  Garth grows dissatisfied with the direction Dunson is going and eventually has to take matters into his own hands.

Wayne, somewhat surprisingly I suppose, plays the villain.  Roger Ebert says he plays both hero and villain, but I'll be honest.  When he comes to Texas and immediately claims land that is not his own as his own, and then kills at least eight people over the years to defend it, wasn't really getting much of a good guy vibe.  Clearly, morality works different in Western movies, but even then, from a modern perspective, he is at best, an anti-hero in the beginning.

Which actually adds to the movie, doesn't diminish it.  The character he is throughout the movie and at the end isn't at odds with who is at the start.  He is determined, and that determination could lead to blindness as to the possibility he may be wrong.  He frequently makes choices that make it harder on the group he leads and his punitive measures only turn people further against him as a leader.

Opposed to him is Garth, played by Montgomery Clift.  Clift, who was 26 at the time this was filmed, was making his debut in Red River.  He was not nominated for an Oscar for Red River, but his first nomination came in 1949, and he was nominated three more times by 1962 before he committed suicide in 1966.

This is my second Clift movie, and while he's good here, neither movie gave me an indication this guy was some highly acclaimed actor.  I don't see a large difference in his performance from any other leading guy at the time.  Then again, he never actually won an Oscar so who knows.

There are three main weaknesses to the movie.  I do think the pacing of the movie is a little off.  I think Garth's inevitable split from Dunson should happen earlier in the film.  There's a go nowhere subplot involving Cherry Valance (played by John Ireland) and Garth that never leads anywhere.  

Somewhat related to the pacing, Tess Millay, played by Joanne Dru, shows up very late in the movie and then ends up having an outsized role in the plot.  Dru plays her like she's in a different movie than everyone else.  She's making quips and being unafraid of shots being fired at her - she actually gets hit - and the movie momentarily turns into a wacky romantic comedy.  The tone is all off when she pops in.  

Lastly, the ending.  The ending feels off because the ending is different in the source material.  Originally Valance was supposed to shoot and kill Dunson, which would have been a much better ending.  Instead, Valance dies and his character ends up seeming pointless, and they fight, only for the late arriving Millay be the one who convinces them to stop.

Red River fits firmly in the category of good movies with flaws.  Sometimes obvious weaknesses are a sign that a movie is bad, but other times, they tend to stand out specifically because it's contrasted against the rest of the movie.  They made so many right decisions that the wrong ones can be noticeable.

I've seen a few Wayne movies and Wayne appears to be at his best when his characters are more morally questionable.  His acting style doesn't really deviate all that much, and just plain works better when he's not playing a straightforward hero, because it's somewhat hard to buy.  Maybe I'm letting my opinion of Wayne influence my opinion here, but he's just harder to accept.

Old reliable and Hawks favorite Walter Brennan shows up in this movie.  Interestingly, an actual Native American named Chief Yowlachie plays a Native American in this movie and purely as comic relief.  And not at his expense.  So I thought that was cool for 1948.

I've said about all I have to say about Red River.  Like I said above, I think it's a good movie with flaws.  And I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I liked it better the second time, once it was clearer where the movie was headed.  Can't see myself turning around on Joanne Dru though to be honest.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Air Force (1943)

Most Howard Hawks movies seem watchable.  IMDB is not a tremendously reliable source for quality, but click on any one of the movies he directed, and you're bound to find something at a 6.0 or above, typically 7.0 or above.  So when I went through his list of movies, I also checked to see if I could watch them anywhere.  If I could watch it anywhere, I would watch it.

I mention that, because Air Force was available on Dailymotion.  Had I been more discerning on what to watch, I probably would have skipped Air Force.  Not because it has a poor grade on IMDB - 7.0 - but because of what it is.

Air Force is a propaganda film.  There's no two ways around that.  Filmed in 1943, and planned shortly after Pearl Harbor, Air Force is pretty explicitly a war propaganda film.  One only needs to watch the first and last minutes to figure that out.  The beginning is a quote from Abraham Lincoln and the end, well I'll just write it out:

"This story has a conclusion but not an end --- for it's real end will be the victory for which Americans -- on land, on sea, and in the air -- have fought, are fighting now and will continue to fight until peace has won.  Grateful acknowledgement is given to the United States Army Air Force, without whose assistance this record could not have been filmed."

The fact that this is a war propaganda film is tolerable for two reasons.  First, it is a war propaganda film during World War II.  Literally any other war in the 20th century would have put this in a context to make it unbearable.  The second is that the action scenes are actually pretty decent, and downright spectacular when you take into account it was made in 1943.

There is however the matter that this was made after Pearl Harbor, or at least because of it, and is set around the events of Pearl Harbor.  Which means the enemy of the people in this movie are the Japanese, not the Nazis.  Which is REALLY unfortunate when they make a pit stop in Hawaii and... Japanese Americans attack them.  

Well I suppose you can remove the American part because it's not said they are American, but it fed on a very real fear at the time that Japanese Americans would do such a thing - it never happened.  Which happens to move this movie from any typical war propaganda to anti-Japanese propaganda.  Look up what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II if you wonder why this is a problem.

It's a small part of the movie, but it kind of stains the whole thing.  In fact, the cinematographer of the picture, James Wong Howe, was Chinese and typically wore "I am Chinese" around so people wouldn't think he was Japanese during World War II.  Howe was an innovative, influential cinematographer who worked from the 1920s to the end of his life in the 1970s.  He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning two of them.  He was nominated for his work on Air Force, and for another movie in 1943.

The plot of Air Force was based on a real thing that happened.  B-17s left California and while they were en route, Pearl Harbor happened.  That's where real life ends though.  The rest of the plot is completely fictional.

One clue about this being a propaganda film is that one of the characters is about to go home because his service is almost over.  He wants to go home.  He's not very patriotic and is just done with the whole "being a soldier thing."  By the end, he wants to re-enlist and is as rah-rah as any soldier.

As with most war movies, this features a cast of unknowns.  Couldn't tell you if they were unknown at the time, but I've never seen any of their movies.  John Garfield was nominated for an Oscar four years prior, so he was at least a little known.  And as with most war movies, the acting isn't really the selling point.  It can be, but everyone is functional, not exercising difficult acting chops.

For what it is, Air Force is a good film.  It's got good action, good special effects, and has kind of a unique take on a war movie.  But some of the patriotic stuff can be a bit much.  Made in the smack dab middle of World War II with a Hollywood Production Code that would accept nothing less than full-throated patriotism, Air Force is a product of it's time, for better or worse.

2.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Come and Get It (1936)

The great thing about the Orson Welles marathon is, interesting movie or not, every single movie had an interesting backstory.  At least every single movie he directed had an interesting backstory.  It meant that I had material to write about regardless of how I felt about the film.

With Howard Hawks, I suspect this will not be the case, but with Come and Get It, we have an exception.  On IMDB, Come and Get It is credited to not only Howard Hawks, but also William Wyler and Richard Rosson.  Wyler was a great director in his own right, but they did not team up to make this movie.  Rosson was Hawks' co-director or second director for a few movies, in this case the logging sequences.

Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to Edna Farber's book, which spanned 50 years and was about "the wholesale rape of America by the robber barons of the day" (Her words).  Goldwyn was attracted to the Barbary Coast-like qualities of the book, so he hired the director of that movie.

But soon after filming, Goldwyn had two major surgeries and was away from filming for a lengthy period of time.  He was not able to follow the progress of the movie.  Hawks, being apparently not interested in the story or theme that Farber wanted, decided to take advantage of this lack of oversight.  He changed the tone of the story, he changed a supporting role that was supposed to be a strongman into the rail thin Walter Brennan, and he arranged a shooting schedule that required a budget over what Goldwyn would have approved.

He was able to film quite a bit of the movie before Goldwyn came back.  Goldwyn was furious.  Hawks I think gambled that Goldwyn would let him finish the movie, because too much of it had been filmed already.  But he lost that gamble and was fired.  Goldwyn threatened Wyler with suspension if he didn't complete the film, and Wyler very reluctantly agreed.  Wyler was sorry about it for the rest of his life and didn't consider Come and Get It to be part of his filmography.

The absolutely fascinating thing about this is that I don't think Hawks was right on this one.  I approve of him saying fuck the studio and doing his own thing, but I'm struggling to think his version was better.  Hawks wanted to do a love triangle, which seems like the least interesting angle to take on this story.

Here's what the story is about.  Back in the 1880s, a man named Barney Glasgow was a lumberjack who had ambitions to be head of the logging industry.  He fell in love with a saloon singer, but chose instead to marry the daughter of his wealthy boss so that he could take over the business.  The saloon singer married his best friend instead.  Cut to 23 years later.

Glasgow is in a loveless marriage when he becomes convinced to visit his old friend, who he rarely saw once that saloon singer died.  But they had a kid and wouldn't you know it, she looks exactly like her mother.  Glasgow proceeds to have an extremely creepy infatuation with her.

In the meantime, Glasgow complains about having to pay taxes and how he should be able to cut down any tree he wants.  Oh and by the way, he earns his fortune by cutting down trees on land he does not own.  Important information.  He also doesn't plant new trees in its place.  His son, who is much more progressive, cares more about the environment and thinks it's better both business-wise and for the environment to re-plant seeds and he's much less hostile to governmental taxes.

And the son ends up falling in love with the daughter.  So in Hawks version, apparently, the son is barely in the movie.  Most of the movie comprises Swan, the rail thin Brennan, and Glasgow fighting for the affections of the saloon singer.  I legitimately do not understand how that sounds more interesting than the plot of the book personally.

So Wyler came in and filmed what ended up being the last third of the film and it was presumably edited differently than what Hawks intended, because there's not really much of a love triangle between Swan and Glasgow.  Glasgow "wins," but then abandons her for his future wife and then Swan swoops in.

The Glasgow character was modeled after Hawks' grandfather, and I don't know if that had anything to do with why he virtually ignored the environmental aspect (supposedly anyway), but just something worth pointing out.  His increased budget is felt though.  Lots of scenes of real trees being cut down and it's very impressive.  There's a few minutes too many of these establishing scenes in my opinion - like they spent the money so they'll get their money's worth - but it's clear they filmed at an actual logging company.

The funniest part of this movie is a 31-year-old Joel McCrea being under 23.  His age is not stated, but he's not yet born when we cut to 23 years later.  And some 30-year-olds can pull off 23, but McCrea looks 40.  People aged faster back then, so when I say he looks 40, I mean he looks 40 in 2021.  But I don't think he even looked 22 or whatever in 1936.

The performances carry this movie.  Edward Arnold, who I've never even heard of before this movie, is great.  Walter Brennan won the very first Academy Award for a supporting actor for his part as Swan.  Both actors seem way, way too old to play their younger selves which is at least slightly distracting.  

The completely unknown at the time Frances Farmer gets the dual roles of mother and daughter and I have to give her credit because she is able to make them distinct characters while also making it seem like they're related.  The mother has a bit more of a husky voice and a carefree attitude while the daughter is more sweet and childlike.  Hawks said she was no question the best actress he ever worked with.  Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia just six years later and her career never really took off.

 Whoever is ultimately responsible for the movie, I enjoyed it.  It doesn't feel like two directors directed it, so good job on the editor I suppose.  It was well-acted and it has a more interesting story than most movies do.  I don't think it ever vaulted into greatness, but it's a good movie.

3/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: Twentieth Century

 In 1934, two comedies came out that are widely credited with being the prototype for the soon-to-be popular genre of screwball comedy.  I'd have to rewatch It Happened One Night, but that didn't feel like a screwball comedy at all.  It was the prototype for every romantic comedy that ever existed, but the screwball part was lost on me.

Twentieth Century on the other hand, certainly is a screwball comedy.  It doesn't feel like one until the second half of the film, but it sort of makes sense that one of the first - if not the first - would ease the audience into a new style of comedy.

It's probably best to put this here, but I don't actually know if I like screwball comedies.  Twentieth Century appears to be my fifth of the genre, if you consider Frank Capra's one (which I wouldn't, but if it counts, it counts).  I've only really liked one of them, Bringing Up Baby.  Well correction: I actually really like It Happened One Night, but if that's screwball, every romantic comedy in existence is screwball.

And unfortunately, I didn't like Twentieth Century very much, which does not leave me with much hope.  Because you have to search for people who don't like this movie.  Because when I was about to list what I didn't particularly like about Twentieth Century, it seems like it's endemic to the very genre itself.

Namely, the overacting.  In my review of Gaslight, I explained that one of the biggest hurdles to older movies is in fact the acting.  It took movies a long, long time to figure out they did not need to act as if they were in a theatrical production.  I should have saved that rant for this post, because that movie actually has good acting with a few theatrical parts that lost me, while this movie is ALL theatrics.

Let me put it this way.  Even for 1934, the acting was considered over the top.  Which means it's REALLY over the top in 2021.  The acting is not this over the top in the other screwball comedies I've watched, but it is certainly not tethered to the same reality as any modern movie, so that's why I'm worried I may just not like the genre.

Twentieth Century is about a theater producer who finds a virtual unknown whom he sees the potential in and helps her rise to stardom.  She ends up leaving him to become a star in Hollywood, which she does.  While her fortunes rise, his fall with her departure.  He and her find themselves on the same train, and he tries to corner her and sign her again.  I'm really simplifying the movie's plot here, but that's the movie.

Anyway, I write out that plot, because I think the movie's intentions are to make both characters insufferable where you come to the conclusion that they belong together.  They are both insufferable, but I'm not necessarily sure I agree with that conclusion!

It's here where I must be THAT guy and judge a movie in 1934 for 2021 standards, because boy I just can't get on the level that Carole Lombard's character is as bad as the theater producer.  He's not meant to be a good guy, even in 1934, but I can't help but feel his actions weren't seen as quite as bad as they'd come across nowadays.

Cause, he uses his power to control and seduce this actress.  He ends up running three popular plays with her, and has an iron grip on her.  He won't let her do anything.  And he's crazy manipulative, doing anything and everything to keep her with him, including threatening suicide.  Her worst offense?  Being a parody of a diva actress.

I don't want to give the impression that this movie thinks Oscar Jaffe, as played by John Barrymore, is a good guy.  It does not think he's a good guy.  But I honestly think we are supposed to root for Lombard to go back to him to act in another play, and she should stay very fucking far away from this guy.

The performances are very hammy.  They were meant to be hammy in 1934.  Which again I stress that a lot of performances were hammy prior to Marlon Brando, which means they are REALLY hammy by today's standards.  John Barrymore is at least entertaining, but Carole Lombard, who I liked very much in To Be or Not to Be, is insufferable in this movie.  Lots of hysterical fake crying.  Lots and lots of overdramatic yelling.  I get it, that's the point.  

Anyway, I fully expected to like this and sadly, I didn't really.  Not all old classics are gonna age well.

2/4 stars