Jaffe, a screwball hero

There's something interesting about Oscar Jaffe as the screwball hero in Twentieth Century. He's not exactly like any hero seen thus far. He's certainly not Peter Warne or Jerry Warriner or Walter Burns; he doesn't really possess any of those characters' charms. There's nothing capricious about him that gives way to his scheming. Instead, Jaffe is an egocentric auteur who is manipulative and controlling, but pretty much a hysterical character. He's an atypical screwball hero, but with Jaffe we can see the beginnings of what the screwball hero and heroine would become.

While most screwball heroes that would grace the screen after Jaffe are the more scheming, trouble-making type, Jaffe has a more screwy side to him usually left for the screwball heroine. He's basically out there, full of himself, and quite particular about how things should be run on his stage. And John Barrymore plays him exceptionally well. He's given perhaps the best lines in the film and delivers them with such deadpan seriousness. This is how Jaffe is, a melodramatic fool who's so controlling that he pretty much keeps his main star locked away from the world for three years, lest she mingle with the riffraff.

Usually, though, the screwball heroine is so unaware of her zany traits' effect on others, and everything she does is motivated out of an innocence really or reasoned in a matter-of-fact way. The manipulative scheming is usually, although not always, left up to the screwball hero, a wise-cracking commoner. But in this film, Jaffe is more of a primadonna, outdoing Lily in any crying fit. The train ride is an excellent example, when both are wailing in her compartment, before an idea pops into each one's head and they stop. At the same time, he's the one who schemes to get Lily back under contract. With each scene, Jaffe gets a new idea how to get Lily back and at the very end comes up with the best one, to pretend he's dying, which Lily falls for. Jaffe is really two parts. It's almost as if the hero and heroine had been molded into Jaffe and not really taken apart so that the two can come back together, which is really what the screwball is about in the end, two parts of a whole equaling one.

Now, usually in a screwball comedy there's an attention to the classes, and you don't really see that in this film, as such the leads would normally be from different backgrounds. Here instead is the differences in theatre ranks with the egomaniacal director and the doe-eyed ingenue who turns into a spoiled diva. Normally, the one audiences would identify with more would be the smarter of the two, and in this case Lily should be the smarter one of the two, but really it's Jaffe. At the same time, Jaffe can't win Lily over at the bat of an eye, and this is because she is too smart for him. So again, there seems to be some mixing of what would be clear indicators of who's the stronger lead here. And while both can be strong leads, only one can be at the same time or else we have an imbalance.

In the end, I find it interesting that Jaffe is the most interesting character out of Twentieth Century and he has what I think are both the hero and the heroine in him. And while Lily struggles to get out on top, she's always reduced to tears or a screaming fit. I don't think we're meant to like her, but if we like Jaffe in spite of his egotism, surely we want him to end up with someone who'll give him hell for it and won't cry at every manipulative soliloquy. No, I'd rather see Jaffe end up alone, and no wonder because it seems like he's got the yin and yang in him.