Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century (1934) is a Howard Hawks screwball comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Tyrannical Broadway producer Oscar Jaffe molds an unknown girl into a star named Lily Garland — and loses every bit of his hold on her the moment she takes off.

Lily flees the control freak for Hollywood and becomes a movie star, while Oscar slides toward ruin without his muse. Chance throws them into the same railway car — the Twentieth Century Limited, the express that races from Chicago to New York in sixteen hours. For the whole ride Jaffe schemes, lies and grovels to lure the actress back into his next production. John Barrymore plays Oscar, Carole Lombard is Lily.

Hawks delivered one of the earliest true screwball comedies — the genre where lovers don't swoon, they scream at each other at machine-gun speed. Barrymore openly mocks his own theatrical grandeur, and Lombard breaks out the comic gift that would soon make her a legend. It lands for anyone who loves the razor-sharp patter of old Hollywood and doesn't mind black-and-white. Stream Twentieth Century (1934) online on iFILM.