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Part 1 |
Comedy Films
In mid-June 2000, the American Film Institute (AFI) selected America's 100 Funniest Movies. See 100 Funniest Films as presented by this site, as well as Premiere Magazine's 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time. See also AFI's 10 Top 10 - The Top 10 Romantic Comedy Films and 101 Funniest Screenplays of All-Time. Types of Comedies:Comedies usually come in two general formats: comedian-led (with well-timed gags, jokes, or sketches) and situation-comedies that are told within a narrative. Both comedy elements may appear together and/or overlap. Comedy hybrids commonly exist with other major genres, such as musical-comedy, horror-comedy, and comedy-thriller. Comedies have also been classified in various subgenres, such as romantic comedy, crime/caper comedy, sports comedy, teen or coming-of-age comedy, social-class comedy, military comedy, fish-out-of-water comedy, and gross-out comedy. There are also many different kinds, types, or forms of comedy, including:
Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films, since they didn't need sound to be effective, and they were popular with non-English speaking audiences in metropolitan areas. The term slapstick was taken from the wooden sticks that clowns slapped together to promote audience applause. This
is primitive and universal comedy with broad, aggressive, physical, and visual action, including harmless or painless cruelty and violence,
horseplay, and often vulgar sight gags (e.g., a custard pie in the face,
collapsing houses, a fall in the ocean, a loss of trousers or skirts, runaway
crashing cars, people chases, etc). Slapstick often required exquisite timing
and well-honed performance skills. It was typical
of the films of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, W. C. Fields, The
Three Stooges, the stunts of Harold Lloyd in Safety
Last (1923), and Mack Sennett's silent era shorts (for example,
the Keystone Kops). Slapstick evolved and was reborn in the screwball comedies
of the 1930s and 1940s (see further below). The Blake Edwards series of Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers as bumbling Inspector Clouseau (especially in the second film of the series, A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Herbert Lom as Clouseau's slow-burning boss and Burt Kwouk as his valet and martial arts judo-specialist) are also great examples. Cartoons are the quintessential form of slapstick, i.e., the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, and others.
This form of comedy was best exemplified by the expression-less face of stoic comic hero Buster Keaton.
This was classically typified by the cruel verbal wit of W. C. Fields, the sexual innuendo of Mae West, or the verbal absurdity of dialogues in the Marx Brothers films, or later by the self-effacing, thoughtful humor of Woody Allen's literate comedies.
Screwball comedies, a sub-genre of romantic comedy films, was predominant from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. The word 'screwball' denotes lunacy, craziness, eccentricity, ridiculousness, and erratic behavior.
The couple is often a fairly eccentric, but well-to-do female interested in romance and a generally passive, emasculated, or weak male who resists romance, such as in Bringing Up Baby (1938), or a sexually-frustrated, humiliated male who is thwarted in romance, as in Howard Hawks' farce I Was a Male War Bride (1949). The zany but glamorous characters often have contradictory desires for individual identity and for union in a romance under the most unorthodox, insane or implausible circumstances (such as in Preston Sturges' classic screwball comedy and battle of the sexes The Lady Eve (1941)). However, after a twisting and turning plot, romantic love usually triumphs in the end. (See more discussion later in this section.)
These are dark, sarcastic, humorous, or sardonic stories that help us examine otherwise ignored darker serious, pessimistic subjects such as war, death, or illness. Two of the greatest black comedies ever made include the following: Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic satire from a script by co-writer Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) that spoofed the insanity of political and military institutions with Peter Sellers in a triple role (as a Nazi scientist, a British major, and the US President), and Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970), an irreverent, anti-war black comedy set during the Korean War. Another more recent classic black comedy was the Coen Brothers' violent and quirky story Fargo (1996) about a pregnant Midwestern police chief (Oscar-winning Frances McDormand) who solves a 'perfect crime' that went seriously wrong. Hal Ashby's eccentric cult film Harold and Maude (1972) was an oddball love story and dark comedy about a suicidal 19 year-old (Bud Cort) and a quirky, widowed octogenarian (Ruth Gordon), with a great soundtrack score populated with songs by Cat Stevens. (See examples of other feature films below for more.) John Huston's satirical black comedy Prizzi's Honor (1985) starred Jack Nicholson as dimwitted Mafia hit man Charley Partanna for the East Coast Prizzi family, who fell in love with West Coaster Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner) - another mob's hitwoman. The film included an Oscar-winning performance from Anjelica Huston as the vengeful granddaughter of Nicholson's Don. Tim Burton's dark and imaginative haunted house comedy Beetlejuice (1988) featured Michael Keaton as the title character in a dream house occupied by newlywed spirits Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. The shocking but watchable first film of Peter Berg, Very Bad Things (1998) told the dark and humorous story of a 'bachelor' weekend in Las Vegas gone bad for five guys when their hired stripper/prostitute was accidentally killed.
These specific types of comedy (also called put-ons, send-ups, charades, lampoons, take-offs, jests, mockumentaries, etc.) are usually a humorous or anarchic take-off that ridicules, impersonates, punctures, scoffs at, and/or imitates (mimics) the style, conventions, formulas, characters (by caricature), or motifs of a serious work, film, performer, or genre, including:
This category may also include these widely diverse forms of satire - usually displayed as political or social commentary, for example:
In many comedies, there is much overlap with the category of 'farce', since the term has now been broadened and extended (from the early part of the 20th century) beyond its origins and roots in silent film (and early talkies) comedy (W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, and Buster Keaton to name a few), and the works of The Three Stooges. Now, farces - and farcical elements in films, may include fairly outrageous plots, unlikely and absurd circumstances, frantic-paced action, mistaken identities, a major transgression or hidden secret (i.e., often an extra-marital infidelity) sometimes based upon a misunderstanding, and lots of verbal humor, absurdities and physical slapstick, often with a concluding chase scene of some kind. Recently, farces have widened their scope by deliberately and satirically mocking established genres and standard filmic conventions themselves:
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Comedy Films are "make 'em laugh"
films designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are light-hearted
dramas, crafted to amuse, entertain, and provoke enjoyment. The comedy genre
humorously exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters.
Comedies observe the deficiencies, foibles, and frustrations of life, providing
merriment and a momentary escape from day-to-day life. They usually have happy
endings, although the humor may have a serious or pessimistic side. 
More
recent feature film examples include the comedic mad chase for treasure
film by many top comedy stars in Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad,
Mad World (1963), and French actor/director Jacques Tati's mostly dialogue-free Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953, Fr.), and Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, Pet
Detective (1993) and The Mask (1994).
These
films combine farce, slapstick, and the witty dialogue of more sophisticated
films. In general, they are light-hearted, frothy, often sophisticated,
romantic stories, commonly focusing on a battle of the sexes in which both
co-protagonists try to outwit or outmaneuver each other. They usually include
visual gags (with some slapstick), wacky characters, identity reversals
(or cross-dressing), a fast-paced improbable plot, and rapid-fire, wise-cracking
dialogue and one-liners reflecting sexual tensions and conflicts in the
blossoming of a relationship (or the patching up of a marriage) for an attractive
couple with on-going, antagonistic differences (such as in 
the
Marx Brothers' satiric anti-war masterpiece