Along with the documentary, comic film is the oldest genre in the entire history of cinematography. As cinema emerged in the late nineteenth century, its first intention was to surprise the public with a playful, festive and attractive offer.
The most convincing model to achieve that goal was the music hall, and therefore screen cinema got the same stereotypes that had already worked on stage. In any case, dynamic situations, runaways, where there is no shortage of misunderstandings and violence is sublimated to lose every threatening shade.
It is here where it’s clear the subtle and shaky difference between comic film and cinema of comedy, later intermixed with no apparent contradiction. Comic film promotes hilarious situations through stunts and visual conventions, and comedy gets it through linguistic effects. In both cases, cinema practices the humor, causing that bankruptcy on the expectations that according to the psychoanalysts produce our laughter.
In other words, what makes us laugh is to verify that a character, in which a particular action is expected, makes another quite different, sometimes crazy. In the case of comic cinema, that action would have visual character, and will be led by a dynamic line. However, comedy film inherits from its theatrical antecedents the pun, the replicas and contra replicas that cause laughter through dialogues and situations.
The Biter Bit, 1899, is often cited as the first antecedent of this genre that in our days is still practiced by actors like British Rowan Atkinson whose character Mr. Bean has obtained a deserved popularity.
Despite its continuity, it’s inevitable to identify comic cinema and silent movies, because it was in the period before the onset of sound when the genre reached its moments of glory.
Among the stars that triumphed over this period include Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Max Linder, Harry Langdon, Charles Chaplin 'The Tramp' and Laurel & Hardy.
Comic cinema held some force with the arrival of sound. In fact much of the interpretative effectiveness of comedians like Danny Kaye, Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis comes from their visual gags, developed without explanatory dialogues.
Being a theatrical genre with a long traditional, comedy quickly adapted to the range of preferences of moviegoers. Comedy credited in film a satire, teasing, mocking quality with more or less propensity towards the grotesque of social customs. Comedy achieved humor through a disruption of the established order, putting the rules inside out and disintegrating the urbanity criteria to, at the end of the show, restores the order altered before.
Comedy films choose, from the beginning, the snappy dialogue and the play of misunderstandings. In the thirties, Mae West in I’m no angel, 1933 and W.C. Fields personified the mischievous comedy both on stage and in front of the camera. The surreal absurdity was embodied by the Marx Brothers in movies like A Night at the Opera, 1935, while Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, 1940, was presented as the wealthy ladies man from films imbued with a certain romance in their plots.
The Marx’s wild and verbal comedy was even intellectualized by comedians like Woody Allen in plays like Sleeper, 1973, and Annie Hall, 1977. And the romantic and festive comedy directed by filmmakers like Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, 1938) remains today, albeit with a lower dose of talent in the dialogues.
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| Diane Keaton and Woody Allen - Annie Hall |
In the development of comedy film played a prominent role German Ernst Lubitsch especially with The Merry Widow, 1934, and To Be or not To Be, 1942, and Austrian Billy Wilder with Sabrina, 1954, Some Like it Hot, 1959, and The Apartment, 1960, that led American cinema to the Central European rhythm.
Cinema of comedy from recent decades has gathered its main inspiration from the small screen. For example, eighties’ films are characterized by the presence of comedians from television, like Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, John Candy and Bill Murray.
As it happens with other films genres, comedy is interspersed with other thematic trends and today is linked to productions of adventurous genre where there is no shortage of comic situations.
Finally, here are some examples of different comedy subgenres:
Romantic comedy
It (1927), City Lights (1931), It's a Wonderful World
(1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Sabrina (1954 and the 1995 version),
Annie Hall (1977), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Four
Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Parody
Get Smart, Casino Royale, Young Frankenstein, Airplane! Top
Secret, Hairspray (1988,
then the 2007 version), Hot Shots, Scary Movie, Tropic Thunder, Austin Powers, High Anxiety.
Musical
Sweeney Todd, Grease, Singin’
in the Rain, Mamma Mia! West Side Story, Chicago
Fantasy comedy
Being John
Malkovich, Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest Scared Stupid, Night at the Museum,
Groundhog Day, Click and Shrek.
Sci-fi comedy
Back to the Future, Spaceballs, Ghostbusters, Evolution, Innerspace,
Galaxy Quest, Mars Attacks! Men in Black and The World's End.
Military comedy
Shoulder
Arms, Buck Privates, Carry On Sergeant, Catch-22,
Delta Farce, the Flagg and Quirt series,
the Francis (1950 film) series, Good Morning, Vietnam, How I Won the War, I Was a Male War Bride, M*A*S*H, Military Intelligence and You, Mister Roberts,
No Time for Sergeants, Gomer Pyle,
U.S.M.C., Operation Petticoat, Major
Payne, Private Benjamin, The Private War
of Major Benson, The Secret War of Harry
Frigg, See Here, Private Hargrove, Stripes,
Teahouse of the August Moon, Up the Academy, McHale's Navy, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?, Forrest
Gump, Enlisted.
Horror comedy
Little
Shop of Horrors, Haunted Mansion, An American Werewolf In London
Action comedy
Midnight Run, Rush Hour, 21 Jump Street
Black comedy
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Monsieur Verdoux (1947),
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Ladykillers (1955), Dr. Strangelove or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), The Loved One (1965),
MASH (1970), Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), Brazil (1985), The War
of the Roses (1989), Heathers (1989), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998),
Keeping Mum (2005), and Burn After Reading (2008).
Top 5 Recommended movies
- Mamma Mia!
- Bringing Up Baby
- Mr. Bean
- Horrible Bosses
- The Hangover trilogy
Magalí Nenezian, Federico Vargas and Kevin Vera - 3rd Year
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