Twentieth Century (1934)
Twentieth Century is a look into the past of romantic comedies, and although it’s certainly a product of its time (or namesake) the film’s sharp sense of humor suggests a deeper understanding of gender dynamics than you’d expect from a 1930’s production.
From the start our male lead is quite different from the main characters of modern romcoms. John Barrymore is the eccentric Oscar Jaffe, a Broadway director with a wild temper and, naturally, a flair for the dramatic. He’s far from the everyman audience insert Seth Rogan was for Knocked Up, and he’s not quite the dreamy hunk a Channing Tatum or a Bradley Cooper would play in a contemporary equivalent. He’s a character with clear flaws, and from his first demand that no gum is chewed on set we understand he has an issue with control.
Control is Jaffe’s primary obsession, and when his associates Max Mandelbaum and Oliver Webb inform him that his hand-picked model-turned-actor can’t act, he’s apoplectic. Webb has gotten a new actor for the part, undermined Jaffe’s authority, and with that mistake he gets the iron door shut on him — Jaffe’s signature move. His tendency to burst into dramatics and shut people out of his life is highlighted throughout the film, and his furious flare-ups almost always follow an instance where Jaffe feels out of control.
Jaffe comes to learn that his rechristened protégé, Lily Garland, is truly a dreadful actor. He walks through the scene with her and the rest of the cast, painstakingly correcting her repeated mistakes. He barks stage directions at all the actors, but with Ms. Garland he has especially little patience. He hunches over, marking her movement with chalk, yelling her lines. Eventually he dismisses the cast to work with her alone, where he berates her until she breaks down into hysterics, and then pricks her with a pin to get the theatrical scream he wanted.
It’s worth noting at this point that Jaffe has forcibly changed this underwear model’s name. This could be symbolism for what happens in marriage, where the woman’s name is taken away and changed, or simply evidence of the lengths Jaffe goes to control those around him.
At any rate, Jaffe’s fascistic acting lessons pay off, the play is a hit, Lily Garland is a star, and after the first night Jaffe promises Lily the world. She responds, “Oh Oscar don’t leave me now, I’m nothing without you and I never will be”. The two begin seeing each other and produce hit plays for three years. This success has come almost entirely from Jaffe’s shaping and molding of Garland as an actress, she is at this point in the film merely a lucky model that Jaffe made into a star. This is how Lily sees herself as well — a product of Jaffe, nothing without him.
Flash forward three years later and Jaffe’s controlling tendencies have taken a toll on his relationship with Ms. Garland. She’s louder now, more emboldened after a few years of stardom. She’s grown tired of the constant restrictions and supervision, and she feels trapped with Jaffe, who she’s beginning to feel has simply taken advantage of her talent. Jaffe argues this out with her, both of them talking like actors. He feigns a suicide attempt, she calls his bluff. She slaps him, he raises a fist, then says he’s not stopping her from hitting him. His fist itself is stopping her, which he must realize. He tells he she can do what she wants, he just wants her love. The next day he gives her freedom, but hires a detective to follow her. Oscar is lying through his teeth to try and keep Lily Garland, who in his mind belongs to Oscar Jaffe.
When Garland is finally fed up, she leaves Broadway for Hollywood. Her independence leads her to greener pastures, “the biggest thing in pictures”. She finds out she really didn’t need Jaffe at all, and she’s actually more successful without him. Without his woman in his life (or his plays) Jaffe is in disarray, and his attempt to replace Garland fails miserably. He finds himself broke, so he dons a disguise to get on a train out of town. He laments this as “sinking so low as to become an actor”. That line perhaps best shows Jaffe’s mindset; a play is not collaborative art, its Jaffe’s dictatorial undertaking, the actors just pieces of clay in his stop-motion video.
On board the eponymous train we’re treated to a variety of 1930’s hijinks and shenanigans, with Jaffe scheming to get Lily Garland, coincidentally on the same train, back on his plays. The two of them are in adjacent rooms, and the trouble they have meeting shows how difficult it can be to truly connect to those closest to us. There are also some religious themes here; a crazy man posts stickers reading repent, and Jaffe offers Lily the part of Mary Magdalene, who was a prostitute who repented and came to serve Jesus Christ. Surely Jaffe sees a parallel here, and hopes to bring his Magdalene (Lily) closer to him (Christ). To say Jaffe has a God complex is just scratching the surface.
Eventually Jaffe tricks Lily back into his clutches, getting her to sign a contract on what she thinks is his deathbed. When they’re back on set together, the two start up like nothing had changed. Their dialogue is reminiscent of an old married couple. The ending is quite a shock compared to modern romantic comedies. There’s not really a resolution between our couple, they’re simply reunited in misery. Jaffe can start making money again, but that wasn’t the central conflict in the film. That’s what makes Twentieth Century so interesting. It’s not selling you a happily ever after fairy tale, it’s exploring the eternal conflict that is the battle of the sexes, specifically how that conflict is changing in the 20th century. A woman is now free to live a successful, independent life. But is that the path to happiness? When asked what’s real Lily speaks dreamily of a house, of children. She says “The only man in my life was that cavalier in there. Oscar Jaffe”. The only man she respected was the one that entrapped her so fully she tried to leave. As much as she acts like she hates the constant surveillance, she loves it deep down. In the twentieth century, women began advocating for more freedom, more independence. But they’re just acting. They can say they don’t need a man controlling their life, and men might act like they control their partner’s every move. All of it is simply acting, playing pretend, humans convincing themselves that love is in their control. These are the games of romance that we play, and when viewed from the outside, they’re really quite funny aren’t they?
