Genres in popular filmmaking have a constant ebb and flow in relevance. Today, the dominant genres filling up cinemas are superhero and horror films. They are the genres guaranteed to get butts in seats, and each is produced at the extreme spectrums of Hollywood financing, with superhero films costing outlandish amounts of money and horror films costing relatively little. We have also seen a recent rise in the movie musical, a genre that not too long ago was all but extinct. 2021 brings a whopping eight movie musicals alone, not even including two filmed Broadway stage shows. A genre having a tough time at the moment is the romantic comedy, which in the 1990s and early 2000s were all the rage. Netflix has recently satisfied some of the cravings for the romcom, particularly for teenage audiences, but they still are not the films headlined by A-list stars like that brought in heaps of money at the box office.
If the romantic comedy is at a low point, its odder, louder cousin, the screwball comedy, basically has been sitting in a corner for roughly 70 years, waiting for its chance to once again be in the spotlight. Screwball comedy was one of the most popular genres in Hollywood of the early sound era, giving audiences of the Great Depression much-needed catharsis by making a mockery of the traditional love story and the upper crust of society. Some of the greatest stars of the time, from Cary Grant to Katherine Hepburn to Irene Dunne, thrived in a space specializing in fast-talking, witty rapport and slapstick. They were films about strong-willed, foolish characters that elicited wall-to-wall laughter, pushed societal boundaries, and found ways to talk about sex without ever directly addressing it directly. Screwball comedies spoke to a collective feeling in the United States in their heyday of the 1930s and 40s, and many of those same societal issues, such as class strife, the purpose of love, gender dynamics, and the anxieties of sexual relationships, are still in full effect today, particularly amongst younger people. Now is the perfect time to bring back the screwball comedy in order to let audiences experience levity and humor to deal with the problems they face.
To see how effectively a modern screwball comedy would hit, let us examine a couple of the works from the genre’s finest director, Howard Hawks, with Twentieth Century and His Girl Friday, the top dogs of the screwball comedy. While several top-tier filmmakers created many exceptional classics of the genre, like Frank Capra (It Happened One Night), George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story), and Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve), Howard Hawks was the most prolific and arguably greatest director of the screwball comedy. While Hawks tackled everything in his career from Westerns (Red River) to gangster films (Scarface) to dramas (Only Angels Have Wings), his screwball comedies truly stood apart from the pack, due in large part to his superb work with his leading ladies. In 1971, film critic Naomi Wise coined the term “The Hawksian Woman” to describe just how distinct these female characters were. These women were self-assured, witty, sexually unashamed, and didn’t take any guff from anyone. Hawks utilized these women across all genres, but in the screwball comedy, where the wit could be expanded into outright gags, they truly shined.
Twentieth Century, Hawks’ first screwball comedy, stars one of the greats of the genre, Carole Lombard, as Mildred Plotka, a struggling actress who has been handpicked by venerated theater director Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) and transformed into the glamorous superstar Lily Garland, naturally having a love affair in the process. Years after their success together, Garland is still riding high now as a Hollywood star, Jaffe has put on a string of flops. Confined to the Twentieth Century Limited train from Chicago to New York, Jaffe tries to reignite not only their tumultuous working relationship but their even more tumultuous personal one as well. Garland and Jaffe are equally petty, argumentative, and egotistical characters, making complete fools out of people normally seen as the height of class and elegance. Their constant sniping at one another pushes the notion of wanting two characters to end up together because it would be satisfying to wanting them to be together for the simple fact that neither of them will ever be able to find another person willing to put up with all that bickering.
Hawks’ film tackles power and gender dynamics within the workspace fairly head-on. The film does not lose sight that this story begins with an older employer molding a younger, impressionable employee to his liking. Having the time jump where the power has completely shifted in favor of Lombard’s Lily makes the verbal jabs she throws Oscar’s way so much more satisfying because we know how that relationship came to be. By the end of the film, we have experienced Lily so fully come back at him with everything she’s got that the couple choosing to get back together truly feels like a decision she can make without the baggage of duty or being forced into it.
His Girl Friday also delves into a workplace relationship between newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and his ex-wife/ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell). Stories about divorced or separated couples are key to many screwball comedies, where one of the people has intended to marry a third party typically to get the biggest rise out of their former partner. Such is the case with Hildy, who not only is getting remarried but also leaving the newspaper to become as housewife, to use the parlance of the time. Well, that is until her plan is upended by reporting on a story about a wrongly convicted man about to be executed. His Girl Friday stands as a shining example of how the love and work binary for women is truly a fallacy. Hildy is addicted to getting the scoop and is the best person out there doing it. Her boring husband to be doesn’t understand this, but Walter does, even if they do verbally spar regularly. Russell’s Hildy has all the sharp wit and confidence of Lombard’s Lily, but where the two differ is that Hildy never lets her confidence mold into complete narcissism. She is in total control of every aspect of her life, particularly in her control over Grant’s Walter. He may play the blowhard, but he is putty in her hands.
What gives His Girl Friday an extra burst of modernity is that it is adapted from the play The Front Page, in which Hildy Johnson is actually a man who is simply good friends with Walter Burns. Changing the gender of that character allows Hawks and Russell’s Hildy to have all the nuances traditionally given to a male character in the dramatic writing of the time, but the adaptation never steers away from the fact that this person is a woman having to deal with all the prejudices and societal pressures that brings. Her confidence is born out of her feminity rather than rejecting it, as we see so often in more modern female characters where the writers want her to be strong. While there is a concerted effort to have more films led by women, too few actually take the time to create fully realized human beings like these Hawksian women, where everything compelling about them is imbued within strong characterization instead of hoping that saying a few buzz words will impress some people.
Screwball comedies lost their luster after World War II when dazzling spectacle and scale truly became how you got people into theaters, which is not all that dissimilar to now. However, we do have a plethora of outlets for film now through streaming services starved for new work and audiences looking for a respite from hard times, so why not afford some space to try a resurrect this dead genre? Giving opportunities to writers specializing in strong characters and snappy dialogue could inject much-needed life and humor into the current film culture, while simultaneously creating a whole new generation of exciting and powerful female characters, not to mention the opportunities for screwball comedies about people of color and queer people that were very much not afforded in Old Hollywood. Westerns, swashbucklers, slashers, courtroom dramas, and musicals have all been able to have ups and downs through their life cycles, and it is time for the screwball comedy to make its comeback.
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