NFR Project: 'Twentieth Century' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Twentieth Century’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur

Pho: Joseph August

Ed: Gene Havlick

Premiere: May 11, 1934

91 min.

“When asked by John Barrymore why he should play the role of Oscar, Hawks replied, ‘It’s the story of the biggest ham on earth and you’re the biggest ham I know.’ Barrymore accepted at once.”

To make a great screwball comedy, you need a great script and actors who can commit to a loopy scenario. These director Howard Hawks had. He had a killer scenario from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, best known as the writer s of the immortal The Front Page. And he had two actors – one at the top of his game, the other just beginning her stardom – who chew the scenery as they play a couple of daffy dolts who also happen to be “great artists.”

The story is absurd from the word go. John Barrymore plays the great and blustery theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe, who has just made a new discovery in the acting department, a former lingerie model with the lumpish name of Mildred Plotka, played by the great comedienne Carole Lombard in her first starring role. Oscar has a carapace of egomaniacal bluster that conceals the desperation of a con artist.

Barrymore is by far the dominant and motivating madcap. His own theatrical career is parodied; even his world-famous profile comes for derision. Barrymore gasps, gulps, strikes poses, goes cross-eyed, does everything but walk on his hands. It works because his supremely knowing performance goes right to the edge of believability and stays there for an hour and a half.

Rechristening her Lily Garland, Jaffe molds her into suitable Broadway material, and soon they embark on a string of hits together. However, Lily chafes under Oscar’s aegis and decides to head off to Hollywood, becoming a big success. Oscar has four flops in a row.

Now Oscar finds himself stuck in Chicago, unable to pay the bills and facing the seizure of his show by the sheriff. He sneaks out of town and onto the Twentieth Century, the train to New York. He discovers that Lily is on the train, and concocts a scheme – to get her signature on a contract with him so that he can raise the money to get out of debt and mount new shows.

The only problem is, Lily is thoroughly sick of him. “How about . . . your delusion that you were a Shakespeare and a Napoleon and a Grand Lama of Tibet all rolled into one?” she asks him.

 So how can Oscar get her to sign? The pace of the movie picks up slowly and steadily, becoming more and more fevered. Oscar freaks out, Lily pitches fits. The two are children disguised as grown-ups. Beyond their grand pretensions, they are two star-crossed lovers, relative idiots but shamelessly loveable.

Oscar is supported by two great character actors, the humble Walter Connolly and the brash and cynical Roscoe Karns. Oscar says of them: “It’s typical of my career that in the great crises of life, I should be flanked by two incompetent alcoholics.”

Oscar and Lily richly deserve each other, and soon the status quo is restored. By that, I mean the two are driving each other crazy on a daily basis – just like two people in love.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Becky Sharp.

NFR Project: 'The Thin Man' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Thin Man’

Dir: W.S. Van Dyke

Scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: Robert J. Kern

Premiere: May 25, 1934

91 min.

Wouldn’t you like to be rich, witty, in love, good-looking, awfully good at solving murders, and always slightly drunk? Thus the appeal of Nick and Nora Charles.

The movie is derived from the novel of the same year by the great American detective writer Dashiell Hammett; it is his last completed novel. MGM paid Hammett $21,000 for the movie rights, made this movie in 14 days, and reaped the harvest of a six-film series starring the charming couple.

Prohibition is over, and everyone, it seems, is having cocktails, especially Nick. We are in New York. Nick is a former police detective, and Nora is his heiress wife. She’s a knockout, and quick of thought and comic observation. He’s cynical but bemused – he’s seen it all. She wants to see him in action at his old position. He politely refuses, until the daughter of an old friend comes to him for help.

Now, Nick is not the Thin Man; that is a term for one of the suspects in a string of murders surrounding the disappearance of inventor Clyde Winant. Winant’s daughter Dorothy (Maureen O’Sullivan, fresh from playing Jane in the Tarzan movies) wants to find him. Meanwhile, Winant is implicated in the killings. It is up to Nick, with the unwelcome help of Nora, to solve the case.

The mystery part of this comedy-drama is fairly played, with a handful of suspects who are churned through by Nick, and a sufficient number of clues as to make the murderer deductible. That being said, the plot really takes a backseat to whatever magical thing that happens when William Powell and Myrna Loy are on screen together as Nick and Nora.

What is the source of their charm? They were both able to bring an urbane subtlety to their lines. They are not shocked by anything, imperturbable in the face of danger. Life is like a game with them, with points scored for acerbic put-downs and mocking double-takes. They clearly enjoy each others’ company. They represent a happy ideal of marriage in which both partners fulfill each other, play off each other like players on a team, like actors on stage. They are performing their relationship, constantly. (Their offspring, fittingly, is their dog Asta.)

The script, which adheres closely to the book, is dead-on funny, full of quips and double takes. Nick and Nora seem to live on another level altogether, one devoted to gaiety and laughter, no matter what the circumstances. The contrast between their moneyed comfort and the hard-edged world Nick came from provides a ready source of humor.

The direction by Woody Van Dyke is unassuming and to the point, steadily advancing the script without any authorial input. The images are ravishing thanks to cinematographer James Wong Howe. It is, all in all, a cocktail of mystery and comedy that’s pretty potent. Wouldn’t we like a couple of hours imagining ourselves in their place, dripping with wit and infused with gin?

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Twentieth Century.

NFR Project: 'Tarzan and His Mate' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tarzan and His Mate’

Dir: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Conway, James C. McKay

Scr: James Kevin McGuinesss

Pho: Clyde De Vinna, Charles G. Clarke

Ed: Tom Held

Premiere: April 16, 1934

104 min.

It is a mystery to me why this particular Tarzan film was chosen, if not for its infamous nude scenes. (There were three different sequences of Jane swimming filmed: one attired, one topless, and one completely bare. What version you got depended on where you lived, how strict our local censorship laws were.)

It is not exceptional in terms of plot, basically repeating the story of the very first Johnny Weissmuller-starring Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), save for giving us a new batch of white hunters seeking the riches of ivory contained in the secret Elephant Graveyard, high atop the mysterious Mutia Escarpment in Africa. They encounter stock footage of jungle animals on their way. They make their way to Tarzan’s neighborhood. They beg Jane to go back with them to civilization, but she is too contented with her jungle home to do so.

Tarzan finds out about their ivory-poaching scheme, and firmly opposes them. So they, of course, shoot an elephant so that, dying, they can follow it to the burial ground where all dying elephants go. Then they shoot Tarzan. They achieve their goal, but are soon beset by natives who want to capture, torture, and kill them. Lions attack. Elephants attack. Evil is vanquished, and Tarzan and Jane return to their peaceful jungle home.

Throughout, Tarzan fights and defeats various jungle beasts (stunt doubles), mostly showing off for Jane by preventing her from being eaten. Weissmuller’ complete lack of acting skills pays off well for him as the semi-coherent Lord of the Jungle. He speaks in monosyllables, but with that body he can get away with it.

Maureen O’Sullivan (Mia Farrow’s mother) is fine as the feisty Jane; early sound era regulars Neil Hamilton and Paul Cavanaugh co-star as the ivory poachers. There is nothing extraordinary about the effort save the nudity (also stunt doubles), which you can find if you look diligently enough online. It is quite tame for the tastes of today, but back then it could get a filmed banned. The looming impact of the Production Code would eliminate controversial sequences such as this for decades.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Thin Man.