The “Twentieth Century” in the title is not only the name of the train (the luxurious 20th Century Limited), but also the manifesto of an era: modern, mechanized, neurotic, and deafeningly loud.

At the heart of this accelerating Kammerspiel is one of the most glorious and terrifying performances in the history of cinema: John Barrymore in the role of Oscar Jaffe. Barrymore, the “Great Profile,” the Hamlet of his generation, performs here an act of sublime self-parody, a grotesque autopsy of his own status as a matinee idol. His Jaffe is not a man, he is a theatrical construct. He is Svengali, Pygmalion, Dr. Frankenstein, and a cheap Hamlet fused into a single, uncontrollable monster of narcissism. He is the Man of the Nineteenth Century, the romantic and bombastic impresario, who clashes with the ruthless efficiency of the Twentieth. Hawks captures Barrymore at the exact moment when his stage histrionics are about to be rendered obsolete by the naturalism of cinema. His acting is not over the top; it is beyond the top, in another dimension, an emotional grand guignol where every sentence is an opera aria and every gesture a stab (often at himself). He is a vampire of emotion, and he needs a new victim.

That victim, his Galatea, is Carole Lombard. And if Barrymore offers a spectacular implosion, Lombard offers its genesis. This is not the ethereal Lombard of her early films; this is the birth of the Screwball Goddess. The film is an essay on the construction of stardom. Jaffe doesn't discover an actress; he discovers a blank slate, lingerie model Mildred Plotka, and teaches her not to act, but to react. He teaches her hysteria as a tool, caprice as a weapon, ego as a shield. Lombard, in a feat that defines her career, absorbs Barrymore's monstrous energy and throws it back at him with interest. She is the prototype of the “Hawksian Woman”: not the passive damsel, but an adversary who has learned the rules of the game from her mentor and can now beat him at his own table. Their verbal duels, written by Hollywood's most cynical duo (Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur), are not dialogues; they are heavy artillery. When Lombard kicks, screams, scratches, and bites, she is not losing control; she is dominating the scene, using the same madness that Jaffe has imposed on her. She is the creature that has metabolized its creator.

The film is a Pre-Code product through and through, released just months before the Hays Code sterilized the industry. It is unpleasant, brazen, amoral. The protagonists are not likable; they are self-centered monsters, pathological liars who use sex, money, and suicide (fake, of course) as mere bargaining chips. The film is a perfect metaphor for the Depression: everything is an act, an illusion, a scam to survive. Jaffe is a failed capitalist on the verge of bankruptcy, and Lily is his only asset, who has fled to the competition (Hollywood). The entire film is a meta-cinematic commentary on the very nature of performance. In this world, there is no difference between reality and the stage; life itself is the stage. The only “authentic” figure is the most absurd character: the crazy millionaire played by Etienne Girardot, who runs for the train sticking religious stickers on every surface.

In a universe of total fiction, the only act of truth is that of a madman imposing a Dadaist order on chaos. Hawks orchestrates this madness with relentless speed. The rhythm of the dialogue anticipates what he will perfect in The Lady Eve. There is no time to think, only to react. It is speed as aesthetics.

The ending is not a romantic reconciliation; it is an armistice, the acceptance that these two demons cannot live without each other, not for love, but because their madness is complementary. Jaffe does not win her back with sincerity (a currency he does not possess), but with yet another sublime performance: faking his own death. And Lily, recognizing the lie and admiring its mastery, agrees to sign the contract, returning not to the man, but to the role. The Twentieth Century is not just the progenitor of a genre; it is a ruthless and brilliant work about the ego as the immobile engine of the modern world.