Why are Comedy Films so Critically Underrated?

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Why are Comedy Films so Critically Underrated? Why are Comedy Films so Critically Underrated?

Michael Arell

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WHY ARE COMEDY FILMS SO CRITICALLY UNDERRATED?

by

Michael Arell

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for a Degree with Honors

(Bachelor of Music in Education)

The Honors College

University of Maine

May 2012

Advisory Committee:

Michael Grillo, Associate Professor of History of Art, Advisor

Ludlow Hallman, Professor of Music

Annette F. Nelligan, Ed.D., Lecturer, Counselor Education

Tina Passman, Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature

Stephen Wicks, Adjunct Faculty in English

© 2012 Michael Arell

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

This study explores the lack of critical and scholarly attention given to the film

genre of comedy. Included as part of the study are both existing and original theories of

the elements of film comedy. An extensive look into the development of film comedy

traces the role of comedy in a socio-cultural and historical manner and identifies the

major comic themes and conventions that continue to influence film comedy. Ten

comedy film case studies are then presented, analyzing the recurring themes and

conventions in practice and extracting the existing critical language used in the analysis

of comedy film. The final chapter of the study brings together the recurring themes of

comedy as they exist in the film medium and identifies several distinct principles and

conventions of comedy that make it unique and that lead to explanations of why critics

and scholars have difficulty approaching the genre of comedy. The study concludes with

the presentation of practical solutions to the established, inadequate state of comedy film

criticism.

iv

Dedication

To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the

buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little,

this thesis is affectionately dedicated

-Adapted from Preston Sturges’ dedication to Sullivan’s Travels

v

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Phyllis Brazee (Education) for her advice on several

sections of this thesis and Reference Librarian Joe Fernandez for his help in the research

portion of this study.

vi

Table of Contents

I. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… 1

II. The Origins of Film Comedy ……………………………………………………..… 26

III. Comedy Film Case Studies ………………………………………………………… 94

IV. Discussions and Conclusion ……………………………………………………… 249

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….. 277

Filmography ………………………………………………………………...………… 311

Author’s Biography …………………………………………………………………... 319

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I. INTRODUCTION

“Amid all the lofty discussions of epic cinema and its status as art, one- and two-reel

comedies poured out of the film companies, attracting little or no critical notice

beyond the laughter of the common filmgoer” (Sklar 61).

Forward

Why are comedy films so critically underrated? How can one of the inaugural

genres of film that brings so much pleasure to audiences be so overlooked by scholars?

Is comedy as a whole held with disregard, or is it just certain types of comedies or certain

comic personalities or situations that are? These are just some of the questions that I

hope to answer in my study.

Very little scholarly consensus has been reached in regards to comedy:

[film scholar Brian] Henderson cites the absence of a master theory of comedy as

blocking other understandings of the genre: It is a scandal of culture that there has

never been a widely accepted theory of comedy to organize the general sense of

the subject and to orient particular studies within it. Since Aristotle’s Poetics,

there has been a theory of tragedy, more or less the same one…. Lacking such a

founding text and oddly unable to form a later tradition, theorists of comedy have

operated in a vacuum, each writer setting out boldly to do the whole job (Karnick

and Jenkins 70).

Until a common critical language evolves to analyze comedies, critics and scholars will

continue to approach comedy film rather haphazardly. Yet despite the absence of a

disciplinary map that includes all types of comedy, one can easily categorize comedies

into subgenres based on shared traits. While discovering recurrent threads shared by all

subgenres of comedy (as I will explore in Chapter IV) will help clarify the field, trying to

create an all-encompassing definition of comedy to include all, as Aristotle does for

Tragedy, would remain nearly impossible:

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Comedy is notoriously resistant to theorization. There is, after all, something

inescapably comic and self-defeating about the scholar, oblivious to comedy’s

charms, searching out its origins or trying to account for its effects. In Cicero’s De

Oratore, one of the interlocutors in the discussion of the comic notes that

everyone “who tried to teach anything like a theory or art of this matter proved

themselves so conspicuously silly that their very silliness is the only laughable

thing about them” (Leggatt 3).

As I have learned through my work on this study, to even attempt a “serious” study of

comedy seems counterintuitive. Not only do most institutions even largely ignore comic

subjects themselves, but also these institutions ignore any academic studies of comedy. I

agree with literary critic Johan Verberckmoes, who feels that “Laughter and humour no

longer need to be legitimized as proper subjects for historical research...They are

interdisciplinary topics par excellence and invite thorough reflection on the working

methods of historians of all kinds” (1). In this study, I have acknowledged the interplay

of the history of comedy and audience expectations with the critical evaluation of

comedy as an art.

Much of the meaning behind this project concerns me personally. I began making

my own films—particularly comedies—at the age of seven, and I have always questioned

why film comedy rarely seems to be recognized as possessing aesthetic value. My

experience with the creation of comedy is significant in the scope of this study, since

many who have written about film comedy before me have never attempted to create

comedy of their own. Philosopher and (at times) comic writer Umberto Eco describes the

major scholars who have attempted to study comedy:

Not one of those who have written on the Comic could be called a Comic writer.

Among them we do not find, for instance, either Aristophanes or Lucian, or

Molière or Rabelais—not even Groucho Marx. On the other hand, we come

across the following… as serious a thinker as Aristotle, who introduces the Comic

precisely as a final explication of the Tragic…. a fussy, moralizing, austere

philosopher such as Kant… another philosopher who was just as austere, boring,

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and not at all inclined to joke, such as Hegel… a romantic, morbid, whining—

although reasonably desperate—poet such as Baudelaire… a somewhat gloomy

and existentially anguished thinker such as Kierkegaard… a few psychologists

with little sense of humor, as, for instance the German Lipps… of all the

contemporary French philosophers, not the amiable conversationalist Alain, but

the metaphysician Bergson and the sociologist Lalo… and… the father of

neurosis, Sigmund Freud, who revealed the tragic aspects and the death wish

lying at the bottom of our unconscious (“Pirandello Ridens” 164-5).

Personally, I feel that comedy is a more approachable topic when the writer has

knowledge of what the making of a comedy entails.

The Current State of Film Comedy Research

Many before me have written about the history of film comedy, the significant

comic minds of the Twentieth Century, and how the films are a reaction to the times:

Overemphasis on evaluation can lead to a reductive historical approach which

simply assumes a linear progress from the ‘bad’ films to the ‘good’ films, without

striving to understand the historical context or conventions in which those

unfamiliar or unappealing films were produced (Riblet 170).

The significance of the historical and cultural contexts in which films exist cannot be

overstated. The effect of historical events and changes in the culture are important to the

comedies that appear at specific times, and sometimes the films themselves may

influence the culture (as the reader will see in Chapter III). The resulting socio-historical

compendium of comedy films results in ebbs and flows of many successful comedies of

one style, featuring one performer or one filmmaker, contrasting with periods of few

notable comedy productions. Some academics catalogue the various comic styles,

defining them as “comedian comedies”, “slapstick”, or “Screwball”, among others.

Although a few scholars have tried to discover what makes a comedy funny or to

compare or contrast comedies to non-comic genres, to the best of my knowledge, no

4

scholar has ever tried to determine why critics do not give comedies the recognition that I

argue they deserve:

Is film comedy a genre? If we are tempted to argue that it is, what are its

distinctive features? There are no elements of setting or iconography that

distinguish comedy as a genre. There is no plot structure that encompasses all

comedies. Nor is there shared subject matter…. What pattern of narrative

development can we point to that could encompass films as diverse as The Awful

Truth, Dr. Strangelove, Tampopo, Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, and Modern

Times? (Karnick and Jenkins 69).

Perhaps films classified as comedies are so diverse that one cannot create criteria by

which to judge a quality comedy. I acknowledge that non-comic genres may have

distinct subgenres as well, but few academics attempt to create master definitions of non-

comic genres as they do comic films. Consider that a Western picture and a Science

Fiction picture may both fall under the genre of Action, yet a scholar will not try to define

them as following the same conventions as she would attempt to define Bringing Up

Baby (Hawks 1938) and Doctor Strangelove (Kubrick 1964) as doing just that. As the

reader will see in Chapters II and III, the range of comedy, as with non-comic subjects, is

as diverse as the people that enjoy the form.

Viewing comedy as a social activity is much more a component than with other

genres, “Laughter is always taken to be a communication” (Karnick and Jenkins 268).

For example, with a gathering of friends, it would be commonplace to watch a Pink

Panther or a Marx Brothers picture. This situation could possibly be due to the fact that a

comedy (which can be quite episodic) can withstand an interruption such as a

conversation during a viewing, which could be disruptive to the viewing of a non-comic

film. It would be rare for friends to gather as a social activity and then view a tragedy

like hLove Story (Arthur Hiller 1970) or Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli 1968),

5

although I do not wish to negate the ability for people to bond through watching a

tragedy. It seems to be true for an audience in contemporary times that comedy is

enjoyable when shared, while tragedy is preferred as a personal experience, “Our laughter

is always the laughter of a group” (Bergson 64). The idea of comedy as a communal

experience helps explain what makes comedy unique.

The story of the development of film comedy is a story of evolution. While the

things that make audiences cry—death, heartbreak, separation, et cetera—are rather

universal and unchanging, what makes one laugh is forever in flux due to cultural and

historical audience preferences, as I noted above:

In film, the designation ‘comedy’ provides the spectator and/or the creator of a

text with little more that is concrete about the text than that it is funny, thus

returning us to one of the initial questions posed in this section: What can be said

to unify the diverse group of films commonly regarded as comedies? (Karnick

and Jenkins 72).

What audiences might have considered funny one hundred years ago may not receive the

same reaction from an audience today. Even different contemporary cultures will

disagree whether something is funny or not. This nature of comedy does not mean that

common elements among comedy throughout history do not exist, quite the contrary in

fact, but it does bring the reader’s attention to how popular and critical views of comedy

can change drastically over time—an idea that I shall expand upon in Chapter II. With so

many contrasting statements on the nature and conventions of comedy available from

well-known scholars, it is necessary for me to present the definition of comedy that I

shall be using in order for this study to be successful, which I shall present after I

describe the parameters of my study.

6

Parameters of the Study

One of the major limits of my study and one of the most difficult decisions I had

to make is that the study will only include post-sound era comedies. One distinguishing

difference in the analyses of sound film versus silent film is how many critics approach

silent comedy as the study of a comic performer, while sound comedy becomes the study

of the director (Karnick and Jenkins 6). This difference in the critical focus, which I shall

examine further in Chapters II and III, is noticeable in the analyses of many sound

films—especially those pictures for which the performers were not the director’s first

choice, indicating that the role was not written with a particular comic performer in mind.

As the reader will learn, this performer/director debate does not apply to the auteur

comedians like Chaplin and Allen, who assume multiple responsibilities in the creation of

a film—performing and directing included. Before the sound picture, critics held film

comedies in high regard, “It was the comics… that appealed to the discriminating as well

as to the mass audience” (Dickinson 32). Keep in mind, as well, that many of the early

filmmakers like Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers made shorts that were entirely

based on gags, as I shall address in Chapter II. Unlike films from the post-sound era, the

silent comedies seem to resonate much better in the Twenty First Century than the silent

tragedies—mostly due to the fact that the exaggerated actions of the silent film

performers seem ridiculous to today’s audiences, which helps the silent comedies to

remain funny, but only hurts the silent tragedies. Both comedies and tragedies had to

experience changing conventions, but it seems to the modern viewer that the silent

conventions of comedy are still more relatable than the silent conventions of tragedy.

7

The addition of sound to the motion picture medium, forced the comedians to

change from a physical to a verbal style of comedy, “Of the popular genres that had

formed into recognizable patterns during the 1920s, silent comedy was affected most

radically by the introduction of sound” (Wexman 108). Of course, focusing on sound

films forces me to exclude the contributions of many great comic performers and

directors, for “The careers of Mack Sennett, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and Buster

Keaton all declined rapidly with the coming of sound” (Cook 263). However, as we will

see, sound opened opportunities for the mostly verbal comedy of Groucho Marx and the

Screwball Comedies. Therefore, when I mention silent comedies in this thesis, it will be

in the context of its influence on later comedies, and not as case studies in themselves.

Although film historian David A. Cook argues that “purely visual comedy was

necessarily destroyed by sound, except insofar as it found a new home in the animated

sound cartoon” (264), I have decided to exclude animated comedies. In the world of film

criticism, animation occupies a genre of its own, with the intricacies of its unique

conventions requiring a study of their own. Also, many studios create animated pictures

in order to appeal to an audience of mostly children, which causes scholars to consider

animated pictures separately in many film studies.

Another reason to exclude silent comedies in this study hinges on how some of

the earliest examples of silent comedy have not aged well, “This style of physical

comedy often seems too sadistic, unsubtle and narratively unmotivated to be genuinely

funny to modern audiences” (Riblet 173). The technology of sound forced the

performances of comedy to adapt, “sound technology mingled with cultural changes to

shape a new, highly verbal comedy style” (Sklar 186). As I shall address in Chapter III

8

in the case study of Chaplin, the silent comedies had universal appeal. The addition of

sound to comedy forced the comedy to be more localized. Even in translation, the

subtleties of verbal comedies like the Screwball Comedies are lost on audiences of

another language. This difference between silent and sound comedies drove the necessary

adaptations in comic performances between the silent and sound film eras. Not only do

the performances of film comedy change over time, but also the foci and methods of film

criticism. The reader must remember this detail when critical judgments of a particular

film seem to change depending on when the reviewer made the assessment, as the reader

will find in Chapter III.

In addition to limiting the scope of my study to post-sound films, I will also limit

myself on the other end of the timeline and only cover films released up through 1980.

In their book, Classical Hollywood Comedy, film scholar Frank Krutnik states “There

have been few prominent film comedians over the last 20 years” (Krutnik 22), citing that

television comedians had overtaken the prominence of those in film. The influence of the

limited runtimes of television programs and the necessary adjustment in comic timing to

suit a television format is so great on the comedies of these decades, that it would be

difficult to compare them to earlier comedies in a study of this size. By the late 1970s,

television comedy had outgrown the bounds of television, so much so that a lot of the

inspiration for film comedies in the 1980s and 1990s come from the writers and

performers of sketch television series such as “Saturday Night Live” (Chevy Chase, John

Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, et al) and “Second City

Television” (Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Martin Short,

Rick Moranis, et al):

9

Comedy became a part of the new blockbuster phenomenon with the unexpected

box-office triumph of a spoof on college fraternity life, National Lampoon’s

Animal House (1978), directed by John Landis. Much of its success was credited

to the manic performance style of John Belushi, a comic actor making his film

debut after gaining wide popularity on the youth-oriented late-night television

program “Saturday Night Live”. A showcase for young comic performers, the

same series also propelled Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd… and later Eddie

Murphy into film careers (Sklar 435).

Filmmakers and comic performers that came from the companies of “Saturday Night

Live” and “Second City Television” assume that the audience is already familiar with the

comedians and with their performances. Therefore, a comedy of this subgenre would

receive a better reaction from an audience with prior knowledge of the characters,

situations, and forms of the subgenre than from an audience that views it as a standalone

piece. The style of many post 1980 comedies in this vein are so tied to the abrupt,

vignetted style of sketch comedy television series that it is this particular style that

defines these films, rather than their inherited influences from earlier comedy films. In

summation, the case studies that I shall include in this study will be those film comedies

that have been released from approximately the year 1930 to the year 1980.

As a second parameter, I shall only include English language films in my study,

for “comedy… does not export as well, since national tastes in humor differ and language

subtleties are lost in translation” (Hoskins, McFadyen, and Finn 34). Tragedy is

arguably more universal, while comedy is localized, “The comic… seems bound to its

time, society, and cultural anthropology. We understand the drama of the protagonist of

Rashomon, but we don’t understand when and why the Japanese laugh” (Eco “The Comic

and the Rule” 269). Specific non-English speaking cultural references or subtleties are

typically lost on English-speaking audiences, making English-cultural analyses of foreign

language comedies difficult. As I mentioned above with the limits of translation of

10

English-cultural comedies to other languages, translations lose the specific capabilities of

each language for nuance. One only has to consider how many foreign dramas simply

become comedies to American audiences because of poor dubbing! For example, the

original Godzilla (Gojira, Ishirō Honda 1954) was received as a well-made and highly

regarded film in its native Japan, however when reedited and redubbed by an American

studio that included the American actor Raymond Burr in order to make it a more

relatable picture for American audiences, it turned into a ridiculous farce.

Third, although many great explorations into the realm of comedy have developed

around the sequences of shorts, I have chosen to only include feature length comedies in

my study for a couple reasons. The majority of shorts are comedies, with few critically-

recognized dramatic counterparts with which to compare them. Likewise, most films that

critics and institutions review are feature length. Many film reviewers, societies, and

award ceremonies will not even consider films shorter than a certain running time. For

example, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has determined

that a film shorter than a 40 minute running time cannot qualify for an Academy Award.

Exclusions such as this further underscore the lack of critical attention afforded comedy,

a genre within which many of the earliest entries exist in the form of shorts. It would be

quite difficult for a critic, under the assumption that an essential element of film is a

continuous dramatic narrative, to approach a comedy that is made of series of vignettes.

Even within a short subject, the simple narrative may contain dozens of gags, which at a

first impression do not seem to relate to the narrative. With my decision to exclude short

subject films, I must exclude my beloved Three Stooges as well as much of the work of

11

Laurel and Hardy. However, as with many topics covered in this study, the contributions

to film comedy from each one of these comedy teams merit a study of their own.

Finally, comedy can exist in all forms of situations, as its multiple subgenres

confirms. In order for a film to qualify for my study, it must be primarily a comedy.

This point may be the most delicate of all the criteria for this study, for a romance with an

undertone of comedy would not qualify, whereas a comedy that includes a romance

would, to name one example. Much of my decision in this category will be based upon

the opinions of those scholars and critics that have studied comedy before me. With this

parameter particularly, my definition of comedy that follows becomes quite critical. For

example, while Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch 1939) and Adam’s Rib (George Cukor 1949)

contain a lot of humor, most critics and film societies are more likely to classify them as

romances rather than comedies. Likewise, some of the funniest pictures like Singin’ In

The Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly 1952), The Muppet Movie (James Frawley

1979), and Victor Victoria (Blake Edwards 1982), do not qualify because they are

musical comedies—a genre that I shall explain in more detail in Chapter III. If a notable

film comedy does not appear in this study and if it fits within the first three parameters, it

is most likely excluded from this study because it fails to fit within this final parameter.

Keeping these four preceding parameters in mind, I shall now present the definition of

comedy that I shall follow in the course of this study.

A Definition of Comedy

I must begin this section by reiterating that there is no universal, unified definition

of comedy, “we have no completely unexceptionable theory of laughter, and this fact is

12

very generally accepted” (Olson 7). While dozens of scholars have attempted to craft

definitions of comedy since the earliest days of Greek comedy, it is difficult to even

gauge what the components of a successful comedy are, “we do not all, as readers, laugh

at the same things or even twice at the same place” (Charney 186). Defining comedy as

an overall idea remains elusive if people will disagree whether a specific film is a

comedy or not, as literary critic Elder Olson explains:

How can we have a single definition of things which are heterogeneous? If

definition is the statement of something, how can one definition state the natures

of things which are different in nature?.... It would not be possible to find any but

a vague formula to fit The Birds of Aristophanes, Tristram Shandy, A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, and Pride and Prejudice (Olson 4-26).

Olson goes on to argue that, “the comic plot need not consist wholly of comic incidents;

it is comic if the overall action is comic” (Olson 61). However, film scholar Kristine

Karnick demonstrates how this may be problematic, “classifying films as comedies

because they contain jokes, comic moments and humorous situations is problematic,

because obvious non-comedies contain a great many such situations” (126). They argue

that “the goal of comedy [is] to provoke audience laughter” (269). Olson concurs by

saying that “it is better to be funny than logical if you are a comedian” (80). From that

explanation, philosopher Henri Bergson attempts to classify laughter and its causes:

What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable? What

common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon

words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy?.... The

greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this little problem

(61).

Bergson identifies five comic qualities: absentminded characters, the external focus of

comedy, absurdity, exaggeration, and surprise (77-86).

13

His findings have inspired me to go further and to define what I call the Four

Principles of Comic Effect. Together, these Principles do not form a universal definition

of comedy, rather they reveal the themes and conventions that make comedy what it is—

which is perhaps the closest one can get to a functional definition of comedy. I shall

expand upon each of these Principles in the case studies and cite specific examples.

First, is The Principle of Comic Timing. This Principle includes the elements of

surprise, discovery, revelation, and anticlimax—shown so well through the medium of

film with which a filmmaker can disclose or withhold information through shot choice—

an element of filmmaking that I shall discuss in later sections. Expectations and

assumptions of the audience—either previously held or encouraged by the filmmaker’s

use of patterns—fuels the Comic Timing, “Humor depends on unpredictability, which

often takes the form of incongruity.... Successful humor involves our expectations being

thwarted” (Karnick 128-9. Olson adds that:

people laugh hardest when they suddenly are struck with a sense of the absurd,

and hence those who know how to tell a joke know they must mislead their

listeners; no one is pleased by the joke the end of which he anticipates or knows”

(47-51).

Here is where comedy and horror films diverge. Both rely on the unexpected, but

comedy uses an aspect of surprise for its comedic absurdity, while horror uses it as

suspense. The surprise of comedy occurs when the comic performer goes against the

viewer’s conception of what is socially permissible. However, for the suspense of horror

to work, the viewer must anticipate that something horrific will happen—the unexpected

occurs because the viewer does not know when the horrific thing will happen. Some may

argue that the surprise of horror results in a more predictable outcome of fright or shock,

while the surprise of comedy may lead to many things such as absurdity, unpredictability,

14

chaos, a pause, or even a shift in the narrative. One may see a great example of the

element of surprise as a narrative shift in comedy in the “and now for something

completely different” style of the Monty Python pictures.

Following expectations, points of coincidence fall under Comic Timing. At its

greatest extent, this Principle can totally catch the viewer off guard with a total reversal

or opposition of what the viewer expects. Through this Principle, the comedy may go

against socio-cultural expectations, entering the domain of taboo.

The second Principle of Comic Effect is The Principle of Comic Logic. Comedy

uses the logic of the absurd (177), “For the comic spirit has a logic of its own, even in its

wildest eccentricities. It has a method in its madness” (62). Olson says that, “Comedy is

the imitation of a worthless action, complete and of a certain magnitude, in language with

pleasing accessories differing from part to part, enacted, not narrated, effecting a

katastasis of concern through the absurd (Olson 47). He goes on to say, “we can render it

more comic as we increase the degree of absurdity or make more and more of the

grounds for seriousness absurd” (Olson 109). Under this Principle fall the comic methods

of exaggeration, excess, caricature, imitation, and mockery. Exaggeration follows as a

product of the logic of the absurd by functioning in a way that makes sense within the

frame of the comedy, but seems ridiculous outside the comedy:

The fragmentary lives we live are an existential comedy, like the intense schizoid

lives of Dostoevsky’s characters…. In his notebooks Kafka explained that he

wanted to exaggerate situations until everything becomes clear. Dostoevsky has

this sort of comic clarity (Sypher 196-198).

Following these methods are the complementary methods of repetition, recurrence, and

intensification. As I shall demonstrate using the case studies, recurring events and

15

repetitive actions and motifs result in a compounding of the actions or motifs,

intensifying with each repetition.

The third Principle of Comic Effect is The Principle of Comic Experience.

Comedy brings attention to the external, physical, and literal, “[a]ny incident is comic

that calls our attention to the physical in a person” (93). As part of the physical side of

comedy, we find that pratfalls and the like are involuntary (66). Film scholars Kristine

Karnick and Henry Jenkins describe this aspect of comedy as, “Comedy pulls everything

down to its most basic level, and as such it transcends petty concerns of the moment and

enters a space where the sacred and the profane merge” (265). This essential reduction

inherent in comedy makes comedy the most direct way of addressing a subject, without

masking it or coding it with the social constraints necessary in non-comic presentations.

Sypher concludes this point by saying that, “Comedy teaches us to look at life exactly as

it is, undulled by scientific theories” (ix). Under this Principle, we have the comic trait of

impersonation and disguise—most commonly seen by the cross-dressing gags that I shall

explore in a couple case studies, particularly Bringing Up Baby and Some Like It Hot.

The last Principle of Comic Effect is The Principle of Comic Sense, which

describes the lack of awareness featured by so many comic characters. Comedy often

comes as a result of absent-minded characters, for “Absentmindedness, indeed, is not

perhaps the actual fountain-head of the comic, but surely it is contiguous to a certain

stream of facts and fancies which flows straight from the fountain-head” (Bergson 68).

From Cervante’s Don Quixote to Peter Seller’s Inspector Clousseau, a character that is

unaware of his own flaws makes us laugh, for “he cannot be comical unless there be

some aspect of his person of which he is unaware, one side of his nature which he

16

overlooks; on that account alone does he make us laugh” (Bergson 155). Physically

enacted, this absentmindedness leads to clumsiness. As for a comic character’s traits, her

precipitance, or penchant for jumping into situations without any forethought of

consequences comes from this Principle—best shown by Katharine Hepburn’s character

of Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby. In terms of interaction among characters, comic

sense leads to the possibility of misunderstanding, confusion, and deception—again seen

in Bringing Up Baby, as well as in The Ladykilers.

Following the Four Principles of Comic Effect, I shall now present the first four

themes that I have identified as commonalities across all the comedy films present in this

study. I shall introduce further themes throughout the case studies and explain them in

detail in Chapter IV. First, I find that comedy goes against the conventions of

filmmaking. 1) Comedy can break the Fourth Wall:

No performer in a film can ever really function as an enunciator—but the

comedian is allowed, at specific and regulated moments, to masquerade as

enunciator… through looks to the camera… or by direct address

(Krutnik 24).

In comedy, the narrative is no longer the be all and end all, as gags often exist outside of

the narrative. 2) A film comedy does not require closure—the resolution necessary for a

fulfilling dramatic narrative. The comic heroine or that comic heroine’s situation may

appear at the end of the film exactly as it had appeared at the beginning—with no

apparent transformation within the heroine or with her situation. 3) In comedy, when one

actor can play several roles, it not only works, it shows true comic merit. Often, the

comedienne takes precedence over any character she may be portraying. As I stated

above, in addition to these broken film conventions, comedy is the only genre of film that

comfortably, and frequently, addresses social taboo.

17

The second common theme among comedies is that comedy is a struggle between

limiters and disruptions; it is a balance of “forces that disrupt and forces that contain”

(Crafton 116). In comedy, gags may upset the narrative structure with no undue

consequences. It is up to the filmmaker to craft a narrative that makes it possible for

other narrative events to keep the gags in check. Typically, every comedy has at least

one comic character and one serious character, or ‘straight-man’, in order for the comedy

to work. As part of this balance, we often see comic characters that are ‘The Other’, one

who does not fit into the preexisting social mold. This is frequently true in the films of

Chaplin as well as the anarchic comedies. Philosopher Umberto Eco writes about the

particular way in which comedy pushes the limits put in place by society, individuals, or

the specific narrative of a film, “Humor does not pretend… to lead us beyond our own

limits. It gives us the feeling, or better, the picture of the structure of our own limits. It is

never off limits, it undermines limits from inside” (“Frames of Comic ‘freedom’” 8). As

Eco describes it, the viewer gains a better understanding of what is acceptable by the

comic character going against the limits of acceptability.

The third common theme is that comedy is an essential part of humanity, marking

us as distinctly human. Comedy gives us the opportunity to deal with life honestly,

because with comedy we are forced to laugh at ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable.

It causes us to drop our guard in order to deal with truths that might otherwise be painful,

“the comic spirit keeps us pure in mind by requiring that we regard ourselves skeptically”

(Sypher 253). Comedy forces us, as viewers, to acknowledge the flaws that we all have:

At its most triumphant moments, comic art frees us from peril without destroying

our ideals and without mustering the heavy artillery of the puritan. Comedy can

be a means of mastering our disillusions when we are caught in a dishonest or

stupid society. After we recognize the misdoings, the blunders, we can liberate

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ourselves by a confident, wise laughter that brings catharsis of our discontent.

We see the flaws in things, but we do not always need to concede the victory,

even if we live in a human world. If we can laugh wisely enough at ourselves and

others, the sense of guilt, dismay, anxiety, or fear can be lifted. Unflinching and

undaunted we see where we are. This strengthens us as well as society

(Sypher 245).

Further, comedy emulates life or as Bergson puts it, “The comic oscillates between life

and art” (74). The nature of comedy allows us, as individuals, to lower our defenses and

to address issues openly and honestly. In this sense, comedy is necessary for a fulfilling

life. I would even argue that life is the great comedy—if we allow it to be that by

acknowledging and expressing our genuine selves, flaws included.

Finally, and closest to a definition of comedy as it applies to this study, a film

comedy contains three essential cinematic elements specific to the medium’s capacity.

First, a film comedy must contain at least one visual gag—consider Chaplin’s walk or

Cary Grant in a woman’s robe in Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks 1938). Second, a

film comedy must contain auditory humor—think either of the classic banter of the

Screwball comedies or how we hear horses neigh every time Frau Blucher’s name is

spoken in Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks 1974). Third, a film comedy must contain at

least one comic situation, whether it is the mistaken identity of The Tramp in City Lights

(Chaplin 1933) or the pursuit of the leopard in Bringing Up Baby (Hawks 1938). The

film medium can present these three types of comedy splendidly, as the filmmaker has

the ability to manipulate the camera distance, the sound, the rate at which shots succeed

each other, and more.

It is because of this final, three-part definition that I have excluded many films

from this study that some critics and scholars may still consider comedies. For example,

The Graduate (Mike Nichols 1967) certainly involves a comic situation, but not visual or

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auditory humor. Likewise, The Sting (George Roy Hill 1974) contains a comic situation

and many comic lines, but no visual gags. I admit that some may argue that they both

contain such gags; but in any case, such gags that may exist are not a major focus of the

respective films, as they would be in the films in this study that I consider to be

comedies. If a film that the reader expects to find in this study is not present, it is most

likely because it either 1) does not fit within the established parameters of the study or 2)

it does not fit within the definition of film comedy that I shall be using for this study.

The Underrepresentation of Comedy

Before I pursue explanations for why critics and scholars underrate comedy, I will

first support my argument that they do indeed ignore most comedy. When the first film

comedy premiered (discussed in more detail in Chapter II), “it was the Cinematograph

rather than the film which received praise” (Gunning “Crazy Machines” 88). Thus began

a bias against comedy that continues through this day:

Like literary criticism, film criticism has gravitated toward genres more aligned

with tragedy than comedy…. Film critics on the left have been wary of granting

comedy a critical edge. The lessons about comedy… seem to have remained

unlearned or at least inadequately studied. The consequences for film criticism of

this lack of critical attention to comedy have been complex and, I believe,

unfortunate (Rowe 43).

I do not want the reader to misinterpret the above statement as claiming “critics and

scholars determine comedy to be bad”; however, by ignoring its significance, they seem

to argue that it is not good enough to have aesthetic value. To demonstrate to the reader

how comedy is left out in much of the literature of film criticism, I have compiled data

from a variety of film associations and media publications.

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In 1998, to mark the 100

th

anniversary of the invention of the motion picture, the

American Film Institute decided to create a list, ranking the 100 greatest films of the first

100 years of filmmaking. They clearly touched on a popular idea, for many other

institutions and publications followed suit. In the list of the 100 greatest films of all

time, AFI only includes ten comedies: Some Like It Hot (#14, Billy Wilder 1959), Dr.

Strangelove (26, Stanley Kubrick 1964), Annie Hall (31, Woody Allen 1977), It

Happened One Night (35, Frank Capra 1934), Tootsie (62, Sydney Pollack 1982), The

Gold Rush (74, Charlie Chaplin 1925), City Lights (76, Charlie Chaplin 1931), Modern

Times (81, Charlie Chaplin 1936), Duck Soup (85, Leo McCarey 1933), and Bringing Up

Baby (97, Howard Hawks 1938). To clarify, The American Film Institute has determined

that of the 100 greatest films ever made, only 10% are comedies. Notice also that three

of the ten films are works of Chaplin.

In 2008, AFI decided to update their original list to 13% comedies, including The

General (#18, Buster Keaton 1926), The Philadelphia Story (44, George Cukor 1940),

and A Night At The Opera (85, Sam Wood 1935). Some Like It Hot (now #22), Dr.

Strangelove (39), Annie Hall (35), It Happened One Night (46), Tootsie (69), The Gold

Rush (58), City Lights (11), Modern Times (78), Duck Soup (60), and Bringing Up Baby

(88) return to the list, though in a different order than in the previous list. Once again, the

reader may notice that Chaplin still has the most entries.

On American Movie Classic’s Filmsite, editor-in-chief Tim Dirks compiled a list

of the 100 greatest films that appear on many such lists. He elected to include 13

comedies: Annie Hall, Bringing Up Baby, City Lights, Dr. Strangelove, Duck Soup, The

General, The Gold Rush, His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks 1940), It Happened One

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Night, The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges 1941), Modern Times, A Night At The Opera, and

Some Like It Hot. Apparently, he was feeling more generous towards comedy when

compared to other critics. Critics at Yahoo.com include 11 comedy films in their list of

the “100 Movies To See Before You Die”: Annie Hall, Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks

1974), Bringing Up Baby, Dr. Strangelove, Duck Soup, Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis

1993), It Happened One Night, M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970), Monty Python and the

Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones 1975), National Lampoon’s Animal House

(John Landis 1978), and Some Like It Hot.

When Time Magazine set about to declare the “All-Time 100 Movies” in 2005,

critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel decided to include only 6 comedies: The

Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937), City Lights, Dr. Strangelove, His Girl Friday, It’s A

Gift (Norman Z. McLeod 1938), and Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer 1949).

According to these two critics, of all the greatest films, only six of them are comedies.

Only 5% of Total Film Magazine’s “Greatest 100 Movies of All Time” list from 2010,

are comedies: Annie Hall, Dr. Strangelove, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, and

Some Like It Hot. The lowest blow to film comedy came from The British Film Institute,

which did not include a single comedy in its Top 10 Films list in 2002.

I would like the reader to consider how many of the comedies cited above are

silent. Critics seem more favorable towards the silent comedies, yet another reason why I

have decided to exclude silent comedies in this study, except for their role in the origins

of later film comedies. I surmise that the physical humor of these silent comedies

survives cultural changes better than verbal humor could.

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If we were to create an aggregate from the percentages of comic films represented

in these lists, we would find that the general consensus among the critical community is

that only about 8% of the most significant films are comedies. Also, consider that from

the above examples, the same handful of films appears on multiple lists—indicating the

small canon of currently recognized comedies. These facts suggest the clear state of the

current critical and scholarly view of film comedy.

To describe this phenomenon of critics ignoring comedy in terms of British film,

scholar Marcia Landy explains:

Though this genre is a staple of British cinema, and though production of comedy

films continued unabated from the 1930s through the 1950s, there are few studies

devoted solely to the subject aside from certain studies of British comedy stars,

the influence of the music hall on the cinema, and studies of the Ealing films. The

low esteem in which British cinema has been held, the predilection for the realist

aesthetic as opposed to the cinema of genres, and the priority given to films and

filmmakers that have received international acclaim have been in part responsible

for this situation. Neglect may also be due to the tendency in general to accord

attention to individual texts rather than to genre analysis, a situation which is

gradually changing (Landy 329).

The lack of study of comedy indicates that many academics feel that it is not worthy of

study, not that there is a lack of comedy films to analyze. As we proceed through this

study, it will become quite clear that a lack of a clear critical language specifically crafted

for the analysis of comedy is one of the leading causes for critics to overlook comedies:

they simply do not know how to write about it. I hope that through this brief explication

of the underrepresentation of comedy within critical circles, the reader can now see the

background from which I begin my study. Yes, many critics and scholars overlook

comedy. Now, it is my goal to determine why.

23

Methods of the study

In Chapter II, I shall begin by tracing the origins of film comedy. It will not be

the history of the development of comedy, rather, a thematic exploration into the major

influences on film comedy that will best open up discussion of the too modest critical

language in regard to comedy. Starting from the Classical Greek and Roman comedies, I

will work through the comedies of Shakespeare, the comic operas of Mozart and Rossini,

and the Vaudeville routines of the Twentieth Century, to name a few. Once I get to the

era of the motion picture, I shall describe the different subgenres of comedy—a device

for categorizing and differentiating comedies that I have found to be quite useful in this

study. As I point out the inspirations for film comedy, I shall determine which historical

comedies were well regarded by critics at the time and by contemporary critics, and

which were (and possibly still are) overlooked. For some reason, one medium of comedy

might receive a lot of critical acclaim, while another medium is totally ignored, a

dichotomy that perplexes me. One related situation that scholars have an equally hard

time addressing is when a dramatic actor like Humphrey Bogart appears in a comedy like

We’re No Angels (Michael Curtiz 1955), or when a comedian like Woody Allen decides

to make a dramatic picture like Interiors (1978). Why would the rules of academia

consider one to be ‘uneducated’ if he or she is unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s The Taming

of the Shrew or Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, when it would seem to be perfectly

acceptable for an ‘educated’ person to be unfamiliar with Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) or

Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959)? One possible hypothesis for this discrepancy is that

after a century or more has passed, later generations of critics, influenced by their own

time and cultural trends, rediscover comedies that were at first disliked by critics or had

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been forgotten over time. As the reader will learn in later sections, this rediscovery has

happened with many comedies—Mozart’s operas for example. At this point in time,

different trends in criticism throughout the last century are evident, but a century or more

would have to pass after a comedy picture’s release until we may determine if critical

views of a film have changed in the long-term.

In Chapter III, I will present in depth case studies of particular comedies that have

received critical acclaim. The case studies will contextualize the films, detailing the

people involved, the overarching themes, and the influence that each film has. The ten

films that I have chosen are each distinctive examples of comic styles, comic performers,

and how critical reactions to comedy change over time—each film seems to hold a

unique reason for its critical and popular appeal. For the final case study, I will present

the pictures that are generally regarded by critics and audiences as the worst film

comedies. As with the previous nine case studies, I will detail the people involved, the

overarching themes, and the circumstances surrounding the pictures. As part of the final

case study, I will form connections among the scorned comedies, conclude why critics

and viewers find these films to be so poor, and analyze how they affect our perception of

film comedy as a whole. Out of the critical and scholarly writing available for each film,

I shall extract the prevalent terms used by reviewers and academics and work towards

assembling them into a critical language useful for the study of film comedy—a critical

language that I argue is currently underdeveloped, if it exists at all.

In Chapter IV, I will present the conventions and common threads of comedy that

have developed through the centuries, demonstrate how they are common to all film

comedies, regardless of subgenre, and explain how each convention can act as an

25

obstacle to people that wish to analyze comedy. For my conclusion, I will present my

answer to the question of why film comedy is so underrated, and then present my

proposals for creating a dynamic and clear critical language with which to analyze film

comedy, for creating a relative canon of films for the study of comedy, and for critics to

stop comparing comic films to non-comic films. As I noted above, one may remark that

a serious study of comedy seems to be an oxymoron, but through comprehensive research

and logical argument, I hope to honor comedy as an important aspect of the human

experience that deserves much more praise and critical recognition than it currently

receives.

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II. THE ORIGINS OF FILM COMEDY

“Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of

the most honored of the Muses” (Meredith 5)

Although film remains, arguably, the youngest art form, the origins of film

comedy began with the birth of humankind. Comedy appeared the first time someone

tripped over a log, the first time one person performed an impression of another, or the

first time someone did something foolish and looked around to make sure that no one had

seen it.

Just as comedy has always existed, so too have comic characters—the clowns of

society, “The comic hero’s indigenous versatility has enabled him, from the beginning, to

tailor his coat to the times” (Torrance 275). Some scholars argue that many comic

characters come from the archetypes found in ancient myth, first described by

Psychologist Carl Jung:

Screen comedians, like their trickster predecessors in folklore, are often defined

through their pursuit of pleasure… This pleasure-driven mentality pits them

against… representatives of the social order, who work to contain and constrain

their impulsiveness. In Marx Brothers comedies, the brothers’ spontaneity is

continually contrasted with Margaret Dumont’s formal and serious attitude and

appearance” (Karnick and Jenkins 76).

Freud had explained how comedy is an alternative to repression of thoughts and actions

that are taboo. Instead of holding back, comedy rewards an outward display of forbidden

subjects through the safe expression of laughter. Karnick and Jenkins go on to note that

“the various tramps, con-men and ‘wanderers’ who have dominated the comedian

comedy tradition” (77) represent the trickster archetype of one who goes against the rules

of society. The authors conclude by saying that:

the trickster story is a highly episodic form that uses recurrent plot situations and

the protagonist’s personality to link together an otherwise unrelated string of

27

incidents…. Although Trickster stories often constitute a cycle built around a

recurrent figure… the events of one story may have limited impact on subsequent

narratives (77).

Chaplin’s character of the Little Tramp is an excellent example of a trickster, and how he

goes from one situation to another:

the Chaplins are the legitimate and indispensible heroes of our time. But the

comic hero, however contemporary his impact, has a lineage extending back to an

earlier day than Aristotle’s, when civilization and its coercive demands were less

securely entrenched. Greek comedy apparently grew out of primitive rituals

celebrating rebirth and fertility; and the hero of Aristophanic Old Comedy,

however low a character in the eyes of later moralists and philosophers, normally

transcended all obstacles in his path and came out king of the mountain

(Torrance 10).

I shall analyze Chaplin’s Little Tramp in particular in Chapter III. The comic character as

an outsider—one that exists within society, but is not necessarily a part of it, is a common

theme that recurs throughout the different eras of comedy, “The fact that we normally do

not link the words ‘comic’ and ‘heroic’ tells us something important about our

accustomed perception of comedy” (Torrance 1). Perhaps the human tendency to seek

heroes and role models is what draws people to many non-comic presentations.

Throughout history the same comic characters, as well as similar situations and themes

recur in notable comedies and across art forms—as some of the common threads that I

have already mentioned that appear to be constant across many subgenres of comedy.

Film reviewers and scholars form opinions about what makes a good film and what does

not—often on the basis of critics and scholars of the past who have researched other

forms of comedy. As I guide the reader through the various eras of comic presentation

and comic theory, it will become apparent that critical views of particular comic works

change over time, from favorable to unfavorable and vice versa. The section headings

that I have chosen are a general way of demarcating different eras and distinct forms. For

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some sections, terms within the heading may pertain to different cultures or different

artistic media in different ways, which the subheadings should clarify.

Classical Comedy

(Greece: 600~250 BC; Rome: 250 BC ~100 AD)

The first records of comedy and theories of comedy come from about 2,500 years

ago, “The early history of Grecian Comedy is enveloped in still more obscurity than that

of Grecian Tragedy.... The first shape... under which Comedy presents itself, is that of a

ludicrous, licentious, and satirical song” (Buckham 70). From the earliest examples of

comic plays, one can see the foundations for contemporary film comedy:

Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honored of the Muses. She

was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest expression of the little

civilization of men. The light of Athena over the head of Achilles illuminates the

birth of Greek tragedy. But comedy rolled in shouting under the divine protection

of the Son of the Wine-jar, as Dionysus is made to proclaim himself by

Aristophanes (Meredith 5).

Since its birth, comedy has been the enjoyable, yet less praised sibling of Tragedy. One

important thing to understand about the first comedies is that they began as private

exhibitions for the wealthy, much like Classical music of the Eighteenth Century. Only

later did playwrights present comedies for the public, supported by public admissions

(Buckham 138), a change that critically marks a shift in favor of comedy,

recontextualized for the masses. We will see this difference once again when we

examine film comedy specifically, for some films seem to appeal only to critics while

some capture audiences and disappoint critics.

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Certainly, presentations of comedy occurred across the world before the first

records in ancient Greece, but unfortunately, it is impossible to analyze directly the

ancient comedies that have continued through oral tradition:

In forming a judgment of the ancient Comedy, we must, in the first place, dismiss

from our thoughts all considerations of that which among the Moderns, and,

indeed, among the later Greeks themselves, bears the same name.... We must also

take care not to look upon the Old Comedy as the rude beginning of the more

cultivated species of later times, to which mistaken notion many have been led by

the unbridled freedom of that Old Comedy; on the contrary, this is the genuine

poetic species, and the newer Comedy… is a mere descent to prose and reality....

The Old Comedy may be most rightly conceived, as forming the thorough

antithesis to Tragedy. This was perhaps the meaning of that assertion of Socrates,

mentioned by Plato at the end of his Symposium (Buckham 344).

Traditionally, we separate the styles of Classical comedy into Old Comedy, Middle

Comedy, and New Comedy.

Old Comedy

During this period, intellectuals began to write about comedy, “Comedy began

with the particular—that is, with invective addressed to individuals—and worked its way

toward universals, as Aristotle tells us” (Olson 85). Already, different styles of comic

characters appear. One is the clumsy buffoon that does not fit within the society—a

pariah. It is important to realize, however, that in Ancient Greece, it would have been

more respectable to exist in society as someone to be mocked than to face exile from the

society. Another is the more refined character that relies on verbal rather than physical

comedy:

In the oldest comedy there was a struggle, or agon, with the Impostor (or

alazon) who looked with defiling eye upon the sacred rites that must not

be seen. The alazon was put to flight after a contest with either the young

king or with a character known as the eiron, the “ironical man”

(Sypher 228).

30

The reader may note that the comic character did not exist for its own purpose, but rather

as an obstacle to test the hero—an almost proto-taboo figure. In addition to these two

distinct comic types, we also find the first examples of the “straight-man”:

This ancient struggle was still being waged in Aristotle’s Ethics in the contrast

between the boaster (alazon) and the self-depreciator (eiron); and midway

between these two characters is the ‘straightforward’ man who neither

exaggerates nor understates (Sypher 228).

Just like the alazon exists for the purpose of challenging the eiron, the straightman serves

to contrast with the comic characters so that the audience may have a point of reference

by which to judge how funny the comic characters are. In the films of the Marx Brothers,

we see Groucho as the alazon who comments on nearly every other character and every

situation, we have Harpo as the eiron whose antics make him seem almost subhuman,

and we have Margaret Dumont (and sometimes Zeppo) as the straightman, or

straightwoman, as the case may be. Note, however, that Groucho may switch roles and

sometimes play the straightman to Harpo and Chico.

Structurally, Old Comedy was a “rich blend of satire and fantasy, physical farce

and subtle word play” (Ousby). These qualities return in the anarchic comedies of not

only the Marx Brothers, but those of W.C. Fields, Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick

1964), and M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970). Like these anarchic films, Old Comedy,

“exercised the most unbounded liberty in satirizing the public faults and private failings

of contemporary citizens. No rank, age, profession, or authority could shelter the object

of Comic abuse or ridicule” (Buckham 85). Writers of Old Comedy had the freedom to

make fun of anything and everything.

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Aristophanes (ca. 446-386 BC) was the most prolific comic writer from this time

period, “The Birds... has been acclaimed as Aristophane’s masterpiece” (Torrance 52).

However, his works did not find universal acceptance:

So unique is the Attic Old Comedy of Aristophanes that it has always posed a

conundrum for posterity. Its riotous license, ranging from excremental

buffoonery to ethereal lyric, failed in fact to survive Aristophane’s own lifetime

(Torrance 37).

His social criticism of Greek society actually caused him trouble, “Having found himself

in hot water for open assaults on the social order in his scandalous first plays...

Aristophanes now presents his spectators with a bizarre comic hero molded in their own

image” (Torrance 50). In much the same way, Warner Brothers ended the Marx Brothers

contract after Duck Soup (Leo McCarey 1933) mocked government, the wealthy, war,

and everything in between.

Scholars praise Aristophanes for the sentimental qualities of his comedies that he

is able to elicit, much in the same way that they praise Chaplin, “comic pathos, comic

suffering; Aristophanes is a great master of it” (Olson 75). Both artists show that

touching moments need not be removed from comedy.

Aristophanes was one of the first playwrights to explore the potential of parody.

Parody finds a source of comedy in mocking an original serious idea, instead of creating

an original idea:

Think of Homer’s “rosy-fingered Dawn”; now think of “red-handed Dawn” or

“carrot-fingered Dawn”. The curious things about metaphor is that the mind,

once it has grasped the likeness of part to part, tends temporarily at least to

identify whole with whole; “rosy-fingered” makes Dawn a maiden, “carrot-

fingered” a serving wench (Olson 71).

Aristophanes assumes his audience has prior knowledge of the original work that he

parodies. In the later section about film in the age of television, I expand upon the idea of

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parody looking to various films of the 1960s and 1970s, especially many of the works of

Blake Edwards, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen, as examples. Several notable film

comedies that exemplify the satirical themes of Old Comedy are The Great Dictator

(Chaplin 1940), Dr. Strangelove (1964), and the more recent Wag the Dog (Barry

Levinson 1997) and The Men Who Stare at Goats (Grant Heslov 2009).

Middle Comedy

After Aristophanes, Greek Comedy entered its second stage, now known as

Middle Comedy, “Whatever Middle Comedy may be (scholars disagree), burlesque of

heroes and divinities dilutes the comic brew” (Ousby). No major comic works of this

period that will later influence film comedy vary from the conventions previously

established in Old Comedy. However, during this time period, philosophers began to

theorize about comedy and to create philosophies of comedy, “The Aristotelian view of

comedy, as the examples of Ben Jonson and Molière suggest, may have influenced the

practice as well as the theory of later times” (Torrance 5). By far the leading philosopher

of this time period when it comes to many things, Aristotle never actually created a

theory of comedy as he did for tragedy.

One of the most important treatises on comedy, now known as the “Tractatus

Coislinianus after the Parisian codex from which Cramer first brought it to light in 1839”

is actually an “anonymous document [that] has been variously hailed as the key to

Aristotle’s views on comedy and denounced as a sorry Byzantine fabrication” (Janko 1).

Philosopher Umberto Eco speculates that Aristotle may have written an original

manuscript on the topic of comedy, “By a fluke of history, that part of the Poetics which

33

deals with the Comic was lost. Was this a mere accident? At any rate, let me present my

own ‘humorous’ hyphothesis: as a thinker, Aristotle was lucid enough to decide to lose a

text in which he had not succeeded in being as lucid as he usually was” (“Pirandello

Ridens” 164-5). Regardless of who wrote the original treatise, historian Richard Janko

believes that it is “considerably closer to Aristotle than is usually thought” (1) and it

gives the modern critic an accurate idea of the theory of comedy as it stood in the Middle

Comedy period. The author of this Tractatus Coislinianus made conclusions that still

affect the reasoning of scholars and critics today, as I have found in the reasoning of

academics such as Dr. Kristine Karnick, Virginia Wright Wexman, Dr. Jack C. Ellis, Dr.

Wylie Sypher, George Meredith, Henri Bergson, and many more included in this study.

New Comedy

The New Comedy works present us with something drastically different from the

Old and Middle Comedy, “The new Comedy, in a certain point of view, may indeed be

described as the Old Comedy tamed down” (Buckham 367). While plays harkening back

to the style of Old Comedy still existed, just as films in that style still exist, New Comedy

presented a formula that clearly demarcated it from the qualities of the other styles of

comedy:

New Comedy depicted ordinary citizens beset by ordinary problems; the

playwright’s concern was with the individual. The plot of New Comedy was often

structured on the most durable formula of all drama: young lovers separated by an

obstacle are united at the grand finale. New Comedy thrived on asides,

eavesdropping, quid pro quo and mistaken indentity, and it evolved such comic

types as the old grouch, the pedant, the braggart soldier - often the obstacle in the

path of the young lovers (Ousby).

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It is important for the reader to realize that this style of New Comedy did not end with

Ancient Greece. Many scholars would argue that New Comedy never really died. It

certainly can be found in many of the comedies of Shakespeare, the operas of Mozart, the

films of Lubitsch and Cukor, and in the Screwball Comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.

Litterateurs credit Menander (ca. 341-290 BC), the most prolific comedy writer of

Greek New Comedy, with giving women a higher place in comedy:

Menander wrote a comedy called Misogynes, said to have been the most

celebrated of his works…. We are unable to say whether the wife was a good

voice of her sex; or how far Menander in this instance raised the idea of woman

from the mire it was plunged into... Menander idealized them, without purposely

elevating (Meredith 24).

The role of women in comedy is an interesting topic, which will reappear multiple times

throughout this study. Throughout history, especially in the works of Shakespeare and

Jane Austen, as well as in the Screwball Comedies, we find comedies in which a female

character is no longer the object of comedy, but rather the instigator of comedy. The role

of a female protagonist as a controller of the comedy is another theme that recurs across

eras and subgenres of comedy. The fact that comedy allows for strong female characters

also reminds us that comedy allows for what may be seditious topics at the time, such as

women holding positions of authority in the Ancient World.

Menander’s works not only provided the world with prime examples of comedy,

but they also predicate on the idea of comedy itself. When considering the impact of

Menander’s Misanthrope, novelist George Meredith says:

As with the singing of the skylark out of sight, you must love the bird to be

attentive to the song, so in this highest flight of the comic Muse, you must love

pure comedy warmly to understand the Misanthrope; you must be receptive of the

idea of comedy. And to love comedy you must know the real world, and know

men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may

still hope for good (24).

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Comedy only truly works when the audience expects to encounter a comedy (See Chapter

3.7). However, a joke can only work if the punch line is unexpected. As Menander’s

Misanthrope teaches us, and so many film comedies echo, one must understand the

conventions of comedy in order to appreciate comedy fully.

Roman Comedy

As professor Alexander Leggatt states, “Romans laughed at a rich variety of

comic entertainments” (18). Much of the great comic writing of this era comes from

Plautus (ca. 254-184) and Terence (ca. 195-159 BC), who both “created a rich treasury of

dramatic character and situation, as well as a dense, flexible, and expressive set of codes

and conventions” (18). Plautus was the first great Roman comedian:

Of all the Greek and Roman playwrights, Titus Maccius Plautus is the least

admired and the most imitated. ‘Serious’ scholars find him insignificant, while

serious writers find him indispensible.... [writing] nearly twice as many comedies

as Aristophanes, more than three times as many as Terence.... Plautus was the

most successful comic poet in the ancient world. We know of no setback in his

artistic career comparable to Aristophanes’ frustrations with the Clouds, or to

Terence’s inability to hold his audiences.... Plautus is the first known professional

playwright... Plautus depended upon the theater for his livelihood.... It was

primarily his economic motives, which put Plautus into disrepute with the

‘classicists’ (Segal 1).

The key to understanding the negative attitude towards Plautus has to do with the fact

that he wrote many of his plays for the purpose of receiving income, instead of for strictly

artistic reasons. The commercial appeal/ aesthetic appeal debate is as old as art criticism

itself and is most definitely still a factor for films. Plautus was extremely popular with

audiences of the time, while his plays were part of the curriculum in many European

schools throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Richmond).

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Menander was a great influence on the plots and style of Plautus (Brown), whose

plays dealt with plots and themes such as “family life” (Segal 22), “a young man...

turning to his clever slave for salvation” (Segal 15), and “mistakes of identity, resolved

through recognition” (Miola 19). Literary scholar Robert M. Torrance states that,

“Plautus normally operates within the convenient New Comic fiction that everything will

somehow work out for the best” (64). Plautus’ plays often dealt with situations in which

servants are smarter than their masters as in Miles Gloriosus (Segal 100), as Mozart later

explores in his comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro. The family life in

Plautus’ works often involved characters like “the henpecking wife and cringing

husband” (Segal 23), characters that we see frequently in comedy film—consider W.C.

Fields’ It’s A Gift (Norman Z. McLeod 1934). Another thing that Plautus explored in his

plays that has remained in comedy film is social criticism, “In sum, the very foundation

of Roman morality is attacked in word and deed on the Plautine stage” (Segal 31). Time

and again we see comedy as a way to safely criticize one’s own society.

Succeeding Plautus, Terence (Anglicized from Terentius) was highly influenced

by the Greek comedies and became one of the most prolific Roman writers of comedy,

“Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the Hecyra and

the Phormio, from Apollodorus” (Meredith 25). One can see that ancient critics

recognized the merits of comedy. Of the two Roman playwrights profiled here, Terence

is closest in style to Menander, “Julius Caesar hailed him ‘O fifty percent of Menander!’”

(Segal 92). Throughout the different eras, we see how multiple styles of comedy enrich

one another in any given era. For example, one could never confuse the comic style of

Groucho Marx with that of Cary Grant, “Though the differences between them are far

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less radical, Terence was long held up as a model of decorum against the purported

crudities of Plautus, much as Menander was contrasted with Aristophanes” (Torrance 62-

3). Regardless of which writer one may favor personally, scholars concede that both men

created a style that succeeded and went on to influence later styles and eventually film

comedies. The different comic approaches used by Plautus and Terence, helped to lay

the foundations of the different subgenres of film comedy that exist today.

Many scholars credit the writers of New Comedy in creating the conventions of

romantic comedies, or what became the Screwball Comedies in the mid-1930s:

The farcical and satiric elements were replaced in Middle and New Comedy by

moralizing and character-study; and the plots, it has often been said, owed much

to Euripides…. Comedy had changed into the comedy of manners (Olson 76).

Even in Ancient Rome, the comedy of manners became something distinctly different

from the physical comedy, now known as slapstick. The zany situations and fast-paced

banter define the former style, just as the pratfalls characterize the latter. While the

contrast between these comic styles becomes even more apparent with the films of the

early sound era, it began in ancient times.

In every art form, one finds that innovation occurs in two ways: an artist choosing

to expand upon the foundations set down by another, or an artist reacting against the

foundations set down by another, instead deciding to travel in a new direction. In this

way, Classical comedy has influenced the comedies of every subsequent era, whether

writers wished to follow in the Classical model or wished to avoid it, “Where has one

heard a tale like that before? Separated families, adopted foundlings, love forbidden,

resolution brought about through a recognition by tokens—the New Comedy, of course”

(Olson 108). Meredith designates comedies influenced by Classical comedy as “literary

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comedies... comedies of classic inspiration, drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek

New Comedy through Terence; or else comedies of the poet’s personal conception, that

have had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or otherwise” (10-11).

As I stated in Chapter I, comedy draws from real life—one reason why the same or

similar gag can elicit laughter for a millennium. Gags seen in nearly every case study in

this thesis have their roots in earlier eras.

Medieval Comedy

(Europe: 500~1400 AD)

Although popular accounts of the general mood of Europe in the Middle Ages is

rather morose, focused on plagues, wars, and poverty, comedy had a vital place in those

societies, “humour and laughter have come to be accepted as essential qualities of

medieval life and mentality” (Verberckmoes 8). Some historians have even gone so far

as describing it as “a joyful era” (8). Out of this era, we not only find a great number of

comedies, but a great variety of comedy as well, displaying “a spectrum of techniques

from slapstick to puns, from topical satire to tropical fantasy” (Ousby). The comedies of

this time appear in the vernacular, contrasting with “serious” writing in Latin. Of course,

this trait affected how widespread a comedy’s influence may be as only one who can

understand the language may appreciate the comedy without the aid of a translation—

physical comedy excluded, of course. The early Medieval definition of comedy was

actually quite free and many works could qualify as a comedy as long as it included “a

happy ending; thus Dante called his great epic a comedy” (Ousby). Often this idea has

been confused with the Classical definitions of comedy, which were actually much more

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detailed and explicit in what qualified as comedy. This Medieval definition is possibly

one of the reasons why today there is so much debate over what qualities make

something a comedy. It is important to remember that only the wealthiest in the Middle

Ages had the luxury of even knowing about Classical Comedy through reading it. The

majority of the population was illiterate and therefore we see examples of characters like

“devils and vice figures” that “were simultaneously funny and evil, implicitly

contradicting an Aristotle they did not know—for the medieval mind the comic was

painfully ugly” (Ousby). As I said above, the wealthy, educated members of the societies

would have access to the Classical comedy of Menander, Plautus, Terence and others, but

the majority of society would not have had this experience. Without knowing the

existing conventions of written comedy, crafters of comedy in the Middle Ages had to

determine their own ideas of what made a comedy, with the aid of their experience of

comedies that would have been handed down orally across cultures.

Medieval carnivals became the showcase for comic performers, “The

carnivalesque style and spirit engendered a laughter that represented joyful and

triumphant hilarity. It possessed a positive, regenerative power” (Karnick and Jenkins

271). For a brief time, commoners and royalty alike could escape the reality of the world

around them by means of comedy:

This tension between comedy as a source of social transgression and comedy as a

source of cultural cohesion or social control runs through discussions of

carnivalesque. Russian scholar and linguist Mikhail Bakhtin introduced the

carnivalesque as a core concept in his rich and provocative reading of the comic

works of Rabelais. His book is, first and foremost, a historical description of

popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Bahktin

describes the medieval cultural consciousness, arguing that in early modern

Europe serious and comic aspects of the world and of the deity were equally

sacred, equally ‘official’. A wide range of humorous forms coexisted in one

culture of folk carnival humor. Bahktin identified three distinct forms of this folk

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culture: ritual spectacle, such as carnival pageants and comic shows of the

marketplace; comic verbal compositions and oral and written parodies; and

various genres of billingsgate, curses, oaths and marketplace speech. These forms

of folk humor reflected a single humorous aspect of the world. Carnival

festivities and comic spectacles, and the rituals connected with them, played a

central role in the lives of medieval men and women. In Carnival, there was no

distinction between actors and spectators (Karnick and Jenkins 271).

This sense of Carnival returns in later comedies, including the works of Shakespeare,

Mozart, and of course, Monty Python. As the reader already saw from Chapter I, comedy

is a group activity, and we can clearly see its roots in the Medieval Carnival. However,

in this same atmosphere of the Carnival, one can see a reinforcement of the notion of

comedy as being a lesser art. For indeed, comedy in the Middle Ages came from the

lowly Court Jester, not the royalty, “As a professional entertainer.... The jester’s role was

that of clown or court fool, who kept the king and his courtiers amused with his antics”

(McConnell). Once again, we find the comic hero coming from a low social order, as he

will continue to do throughout Shakespeare, Mozart, Chaplin, and more. Note how the

comic hero in any era is quite different from the contemporary tragedies and their heroic

figures.

Many examples of Medieval comedy demonstrate an appreciation of crude

humor, “During the Middle Ages people seem to have laughed at the grotesque as

when… Dante’s gargoyle-like demons caper through the lower circles of Hell making

obscene noises” (Sypher 202). It does not need to be argued that crude humor still exists

today, regardless of how low it resides on the comic spectrum, “since Bakhtin, late

medieval humour in the form of ‘grotesque realism’ has been recognized as having been

specific enough to define a whole period” (Verberckmoes 7). Crude humor was a large

part of the early Greek comedies as well, continuing in Dante’s Divine Comedy,

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considered not only one of the greatest vernacular Italian works but one of the greatest

works in any language. Consider that writing in the vernacular gave Dante (ca. 1265-

1321 AD) the opportunity to experiment with crude humor, as crude humor would not

have been as acceptable in a work written in the “high” language of Latin. Scholars

praise Dante not only for his comedy but for the depth of his allegorical and theological

sense as well. This endurance marks the power of comedy, even when it is seemingly at

its most profane. Dante’s comedy works as a foil to his serious nature of his journey

through Hell.

As a Twentieth Century analogy to Dante’s exploration of the profane, consider

the reaction to nudity in motion pictures throughout the Twentieth Century. Nudity was

understood as an artistic exploration in pre-Code American motion pictures that mostly

appeared in art museums and the like. However, once the Hays Code was established

and films were intended for mass audience appeal, people then understood nudity as

pornographic. Later in the century, we see the same discrepancy based on the context in

which the nudity is framed when nudity in a 1960s art house picture would be “tasteful”

while nudity in a mainstream picture would be “exploitation”. As it has been in the

debate of aestheticism of the human body versus pornography for centuries, the actual

subject of nudity did not change; the societal reaction to that subject did, based on the

contextual framing. In much the same way, a comic work like Dante’s can have the

reputation of being licentious in one era while in another era it can have the reputation of

being one of the greatest works of Western literature—depending on how one wishes to

interpret the nature of his comedy. Consider how Thomas Bowdler’s censored version of

Shakespeare’s works presented a much different meaning to early Nineteenth Century

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readers than Shakespeare’s actual texts (Leithart). In the centuries since Dante, many

artists like Jonathan Swift, Mozart, and Mel Brooks have followed his example and

explored crude humor.

Out of this canon of Medieval comedy, we find the origins of farce, “A type of

broad comedy in which extreme crisis for the characters is amusing for the audience”

(Ousby), but since the Middle Ages it has been “neglected or scorned in criticism”

(Brown). When a film attempts to enter the realm of farce, it encounters a type of

comedy that has existed for hundreds of years, but one that has never really been

critically well recognized.

The next significant comic writer after Dante has to be Italian writer Giovanni

Boccaccio (1313-1375). Boccaccio studied Dante extensively and was influenced by his

Divine Comedy, “For some time he held a chair founded to expound the works of Dante,

and produced a commentary on the Divina Commedia” (Rockwood), but Boccaccio often

seems to use humor much more explicitly than his predecessor. Boccaccio’s most

significant contribution to the genre of comedy is his Decameron, a “14th-century literary

masterpiece…. Boccaccio’s collection of 100 stories” (Jones). The frame narrative

occurs across ten days, and each day’s stories feature a different style of humor

(Boccaccio i-iii). The Decameron became popular as soon as Boccaccio wrote it:

The Decameron was an immediate success with the merchant and entrepreneurial

classes that figure so largely its novelle.... Although the early Florentine

humanists were not prepared to recognize a collection of tales in Italian prose as a

serious work of literature [Dante excluded, of course]… the Decameron quickly

reached an international audience.... The Decameron is the first landmark text of

modern times to exert a truly European influence.... The instant and enduring

popularity of the Decameron is due to the energy and versatility of its style and

the originality of its form... Bocaccio sometimes imitates and sometimes parodies

the full range of medieval genres (Wallace 2).

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The fact that the Decameron appeared in translations across Europe meant that it could

reach a wide audience and have great influence on writers from many different cultural

backgrounds. Although there are litterateurs that question the originality of the stories

that Boccaccio includes in his work, “Many of the tales were already old at this time”

(Crofton), it is because of Boccaccio that the stories reached writers from other countries,

and certainly his “prose influenced many Renaissance writers, and his tales themselves

have been borrowed for centuries” (“Decameron”). Even filmmakers have followed

Boccaccio’s example of using comedy as a tool for teaching moral lessons:

Boccaccio is much ruder than Chaucer, who was influenced by him. Or, to put it

more accurately, he’s more explicit, more comprehensive…. The moral is that

people can be happy, prosperous and creative even in the worst of times: nothing

quenches the life force (Jones).

Even more than Dante, Boccaccio demonstrates how crude humor can sometimes be the

most effective means of delivering social criticism.

Many Medieval scholars argue that no writer was more influenced by Boccaccio

than William Chaucer (1343-1400):

the most significant witness to the Decameron’s influence in England is Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales. Six of Chaucer’s two dozen stories find parallels in the

Decameron.... Chaucer, whose knowledge of Italian was extraordinarily good, owes

more to Boccaccio than to any other writer in any language (Wallace 111).

But just like any great craftsman, Chaucer learned from the style of Boccaccio to create a

work distinctly his own. Chaucer continues with Boccaccio’s ability to teach through

comedy. Even though “The predominant tone is of detached humorous satire” (Ousby),

British literature scholars Steven Serafin and Valerie Grosvenor argue, “The serious vein

in Chaucer’s work deserves to be recognized—the grimly humorous anecdote about

greed and death by the Pardoner” (1). Through humor, Chaucer leaves his readers with a

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memorable experience, but one that will cause them to reflect on their own moral

dilemmas.

From the Sixteenth Century theatre of Italy came the stylized Commedia

dell’Arte, or “Art Comedy” (Grout 79), of zany situations and physical stunts. It is

curious that something with the word “Art” in its title so closely resembles the slapstick

film comedies, which are not held in so high a regard:

This show-stopping character of gags in longer works has long been recognized in

the theatrical forms that films drew on. Commedia dell’ Arte lazzi (which

provided schemata for many gags which survive into film comedy) were devised

precisely as autonomous routines, which could be inserted willy-nilly into almost

any comic plot, at the whim of the company manager or even an individual

performer. Plot development would be shunted aside momentarily, while the

lazzi action took over the main track. Like early film gags, lazzi had their own

development, but it was self-enclosed one which contributed little or nothing to

the unfolding plot action. Like modern comic routines, they are ‘bits,’ self-

contained fragments. Considered as a structure of explosive interruption, the

early gag film shows its relation to the cinema of attractions, a display of an

action whose temporal development is prompt, rather than setting up an extensive

working out of plot and characterization. The pleasure gags gave audiences may

relate more closely to the spectators amazed by the operation of Lumiere’s new

invention than to a contemporary audience laughing over a Neil Simon comedy

(Gunning 97).

The Commedia dell’arte method of incorporating numerous gags and stock characters

influenced many artists, including Shakespeare and Mozart (Headington 78). In addition

to the comic routines and stock characters, Commedia dell’arte also exemplified physical

comedy (Grout 248). So out of this one style of Italian comedy comes the seed for not

only the anarchic slapstick comedies of the 1930s, but the stock characters of the

Screwball Comedies as well. Already we see how critical the balance of narrative and

gags, which I shall discuss further in Chapters III and IV, is to the genre of comedy.

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The Renaissance

(Europe: 1400-1600 AD)

The Renaissance period presented a renewed appreciation for art and creativity

and scholars still revere many of the comedies written during this period:

Renaissance laughter was complex…. When Machiavelli laughs he almost

sneers… We can fancy that his Prince would laugh somewhat like a Borgia….

[with] the strained, joyless grimace of Thomas Hobbes, who explained laughter as

a sense of ‘sudden glory’ arising from our feeling of superiority whenever we see

ourselves triumphantly secure while others stumble (Sypher 202-203).

Many writers of this time acknowledged the profound potential of comedy, understanding

that a genre that prides itself in avoiding seriousness could still make serious statements

about life, society, culture, and humanity, just as earlier writers had discovered and

contemporary writers still explore. However, despite the growing inspiration of artists

during the Renaissance, comedy still remained a lesser form of expression in the eyes of

critics, “Despite such gifted practitioners of comedy as Shakespeare, Molière, Lope De

Vega and Jonson, critics and even practitioners tended to view comedy as a genre inferior

to tragedy” (Ousby). In the same vein as the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, that continued

into the Renaissance, was the Comedy of Humours of Renaissance England:

popularized by the enormous success of Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour

(1598) in its performance by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Jonson peopled his

play with characters, each of whom was dominated by a single attitude or

‘humour’. It was a comic technique familiar from Aristophanes.... Almost all

contemporary and subsequent writers of comedy have been in various degrees

reliant on the comic potential of ‘humours’ (Brown).

It is due to the influence of Commedia dell’Arte and the Comedy of Humours that we see

stock characters in many comedy films. For example, the character of the wealthy

woman (usually an older relative of the protagonist) appears in Twentieth Century

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(Howard Hawks 1934), The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937), Bringing Up Baby

(Hawks 1938), and His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940), just to name a few. The narratives are

not the same, simply the replicated character.

The foremost comic theorist of the Renaissance was Dutch scholar Desiderius

Erasmus (1466-1536), who some scholars consider “[t]he most brilliant and most

important leader of German humanism” (Sauer). Erasmus wrote along the lines of art for

art’s sake. He felt that one should appreciate comedy as something that has value in

itself, not for what comedy can teach or to what it can lead. He also used humor in his

critical writings, “The works of Erasmus... have so greatly enriched the literature of the

world.... in the witty language of the Jester.... Erasmus was above all things a critic....

Erasmus was the most facetious man, and the greatest critic of his age” (Erasmus v-xv).

Erasmus’ best-known work that discusses comedy is his In Praise of Folly:

Wives are always allowed their humor, yet is only in exchange for titillation and

pleasure, which indeed are but other names for Folly.... in the most luxurious

entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce and relish to the daintiest cates and

delicacies; so that if there be not one of the guests naturally fool enough to be

played upon by the rest, they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his

jokes, and flouts, and blunders, shall make the whole company split themselves

with laughing (74).

In the writings of Erasmus, we find support for the argument that critics and scholars

should judge comedy works for what they are, not how well they can approximate

another genre, an argument that I shall return to in Chapter IV.

The greatest comic writer of the Renaissance, and perhaps the most celebrated

playwright of all time, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was as much a master of

comedy as he was a master of tragedies, romances, and histories, “Shakespeare’s plays…

are saturated with the golden light of comedy—the comedy that is redemptive as tragedy

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cannot be” (Sypher 253). He crafted comic situations and characterizations that are still

relevant in today’s comedy, “Supporting actors such as Edward Everett Horton or

Franklin Pangborn, played roles within romantic comedies which parallel the traditional

function of the comic servant in Shakespearean New Comedy” (Karnick and Jenkins

165). Shakespeare understood comedy, “We can assume, then, that Shakespeare thought

long and hard about the nature of comedy” (Maslen 34), and no two of his comic plays

are exactly alike:

It is no easy task to summarize Shakespeare’s achievement in the field of comedy.

This is partly because of the range and abundance of his work, extending as it

does from The Comedy of Errors to The Tempest, including within these limits

some three dozen plays (Parrott 402-403).

Shakespeare demonstrates what I argue in Chapter I, that true comedy includes a visual

aspect, an auditory aspect, and comic situations, “Shakespearean comedy finds

expression in action, speech, and character” (Parrott 402-403). Because Shakespeare’s

contributions to film comedy are so extensive, I have broken my analysis of his influence

into several sections.

As we are able to see in his plays, Shakespeare inherited his treatment of comedy

and his methods for crafting it from many older comic sources. We know that the works

of Menander, Plautus, and Terence were part of the curriculum in most European schools

at the time. From this fact, and from the similarity of some of his comedy to that of the

Classics, we can surmise that Shakespeare would have encountered the comic works of

Classical and Medieval comedians during his schooling. He used all of this acquired

knowledge of past comedies in order to synthesize his own, “His comedy of incredible

imbroglio belongs to the literary section. One may conceive that there was a natural

resemblance between him and Menander” (12). Shakespeare had the ability to take both

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paths of artistic innovation—he followed the styles of earlier writers and created

scenarios uniquely his own, “From the eristic imitation of The Comedy of Errors to the

eclectic recension of The Tempest, Shakespeare relies on New Comedy throughout his

career” (Miola 17). A lot of literary scholars conclude that the Medieval Carnival played

an important part in the shaping of Shakespeare’s approach to comedy:

the case emerges that the themes of Shakespeare’s comedies may be said to derive

not from the mysteries or the moralities or the interludes, but from a fourth

dramatic tradition of folk ritual.... [Shakespeare scholar] C.L. Barber sees the

roots of Shakespearean comedy in the community observance of those feast-days

and holidays that formed periodic alternatives to, and inversions of, the pattern of

everyday medieval and Elizabethan life (Charney 156).

However, one cannot discuss Shakespeare without mentioning his exquisite originality,

“Out of his Renaissance-Roman and Renaissance-romance materials, Shakespeare

wrought a form of comedy unmistakably his own” (Charney 3). As I mentioned in the

section about Classical Comedy, the works of Plautus and Terence were taught in

Renaissance schools, plausibly linking Shakespeare’s comedies as a continuation of the

Classical New Comedy:

Not Jonson or Molière but Shakespeare is the legitimate heir to Attic New

Comedy; his romantic festivities are far closer to Menander than their classical

satires. In The Comedy of Errors, one of his earliest plays, Shakespeare adapted a

Plautine farce, the Menaechmi, in such a way as to amplify the mysteries of divine

providence (Torrance 111).

But Shakespeare’s New Comedy is what one could call “a romanticized version of New

Comedic eros” (Miola 71), the “Characters and gags from Roman comedy exist in a new

space, one Shakespeare creates by transforming convention and setting” (Miola 23). On

the topic of the Shakespeare’s first comedy, The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare scholar

Maurice Charney says that it “holds a place unique in the Shakespearean canon because it

shows at once the most direct derivation from Roman comedy and, at the same time, an

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awareness of contemporary audience and occasion” (Charney 17). Once Shakespeare

had established himself as a writer, the inspiration for later comedies like A Midsummer

Night’s Dream is unclear, “There is no single source for the Dream, no play, poem, or

novel that gives singly or in combination all the elements of its plot” (Parrott 126),

indicating to me that Shakespeare relied less on actual Classical conventions and more on

his own creative adaption of these precedents. Just as earlier writers used comedy to

teach lessons, Shakespeare presented examples of etiquette through his comedies, “the

Shrew presents itself as a kind of comic schoolroom” (Maslen 56). Shakespeare used

comedy to instruct because it is a form that could have been understood by the wealthy

Globe patrons in the balconies as well as by the ‘Groundlings’. Here we are reminded, as

we will continue to be throughout this study, that comedy has the power to address all

social classes.

Unlike, the comic characters of Ancient Greece, Shakespeare’s comic characters

exist for a purpose beyond comic relief, “they are not the tricksters—Shakespeare’s

orientation is aristocratic and his plotters are dukes and princes and witty heroines”

(Charney 10). Most often, his comic characters are deep and fully formed:

Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the comic

spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be found anywhere out

of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they are of the world enlarged to

our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination. They are…

creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to

pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society (Meredith 11).

As genuine, convincing, and believable comic characters, they live on in dozens of like

types and in the comic situations of film:

the clue to the comic quality of Shakespeare: his comic agents, if they are

ridiculous, are only very slightly so… and are viewed with affection; they make

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mistakes which are perfectly excusable because they are perfectly natural, indeed

practically unavoidable (Olson 91).

Through the convincing realism of his comic characters, we once again see that comedy

stays close to reality. Unlike the ironic characters seen in some forms of comedy,

Shakespeare’s comic protagonists are often willing to admit their flaws, “Falstaff is

impervious to mockery because he laughs unrestrainedly at himself” (Torrance 124).

There is a sense of self-discovery in his character studies, “Shakespeare’s protagonists do

not know what they want” (Charney 5-6). Maybe this humanness is why Shakespeare’s

comic characters, just like George Webber of 10 (Blake Edwards 1979) or Felix and

Oscar of The Odd Couple (Gene Saks 1968), are so appealing to audiences—they are not

all “put together” and they do not know in what direction they are headed. Unlike the

heroes of non-comic works, that often seem to have a clear purpose and clear objectives,

the comic hero is much like the typical viewer that focuses more on the present and life’s

little mishaps than on his or her “destiny”.

Shakespeare scholar Robert W. Maslen describes Shakespeare’s comedies as

“comedy of love and death” (155). While this simplification may be an

overgeneralization, they are the most common themes that Shakespeare addresses in his

comedy, “As You Like It depicts love and war simultaneously as natural and cultural”

(Holland 86). Literary scholar Maurice Charney channels St. Paul when he states

“Classical, festive, and romantic elements help make up Shakespeare’s comedies—these

three, but the greatest of these is romantic” (119). By “romantic”, Charney is not

describing the presence of warm, bubbly feelings throughout, simply “[t]he pairing off of

the lovers, at least the main characters, provides a festive conclusion to the play” (Miola

58) and “[t]he essential presupposition of final harmony through the restorative power of

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love defines these comedies as ‘romantic’” (Torrance 113). From Shakespeare onward,

romance and comedy becomes a successful pair in film and other media, from City Lights

(Charlie Chaplin 1931), to the Screwball Comedies, to Annie Hall (Woody Allen 1977),

to later examples like When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner 1989), and The Proposal (Anne

Fletcher 2009), and dozens more notable examples of the subgenre.

As I stated in Chapter I, comedy is the only genre that can comfortably and

successfully deal with subjects that are taboo. One of these subjects, of course, is death:

In a fixed reality, death is the unavoidable end of each human course. Romantic

comedy thus has a special need to get around death somehow: by ignoring it

completely or, more interestingly, by presenting it as nonfinal, illusory; indeed,

Shakespeare preserves all his romantic comedy characters intact, no matter how

minor (Charney 30).

Death is present in so many narratives of Shakespeare, but in his comedies, death does

not have the final say:

It may seem perverse to argue that Shakespearean comedy is really about death

and dying, but that is nonetheless what I should like to propose. More precisely,

Shakespearean comedy is about the initial avoidance or displacement of the idea

of death (Charney 121).

For example, consider Claudio’s ruminations on death in Measure for Measure or how

The Comedy of Errors begins with a death sentence for Aegeon. Following

Shakespeare’s influence, numerous film comedies deal with death—consider Arsenic and

Old Lace (Frank Capra 1944), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer 1949), or

M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970)—but often, as in Shakespeare, as an afterthought.

With Shakespeare, we first see the term Comedy of Manners as applied to New

Comedy social situations:

A form in which laughter is provoked by exaggerations of fashionable behaviour,

absurdities in fashion itself, or departures from what is considered to be civilized

normality of behaviour. Thus a comedy of manners can only arise in a highly

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developed society, in which there is a leisured class, which not only has standards

of politeness and good sense in human relationships, but tends to give such

standards first importance in social life (Wynne-Davies).

These comedies, however, are far from superficial, as “Shakespeare engages some larger

issues” such as “identity, jealousy, love, and family relationships” (Miola 37). Many

critics will describe film comedies such as the works of Lubitsch, Cukor, and (in some

ways) Capra, as Comedies of Manners. One great example is Preston Sturges’ The Lady

Eve (1941), in which we see Shakespeare’s often-used device of eavesdropping (Maslen

160-161).

Several scholars credit Shakespeare with creating strong female characters.

Literary critic Northrop Frye explains, “What usually happens is that a young man wants

a young woman’, the woman can only be ‘bride to be redeemed’” (172). However, film

scholar Kathleen Rowe argues, “While this may be so in the Greek and Roman New

Comedies, it is not true of Shakespearean comedy” (49). Shakespeare’s female

protagonists have the ability to speak for themselves:

The most extraordinary of Shakespeare’s early exposures of these conventions

is... The Taming of the Shrew... that anatomizes the Elizabethan views on comedy

and on women that shape the main body of the play (Maslen 51).

Consider how Katherina’s behaviors that do not match the mandated behaviors of a

woman in that society become a stumbling block to her suitor. As in the works of Plautus

and Erasmus, Katherina controls the comedy. This manner of female character does not

exist in film comedy until the Screwball Comedies of the 1930s and 40s in which

actresses like Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, and Katharine Hepburn

portray strong female characters that are in control of the comedy and are not simply the

object of comedy.

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Just as Shakespeare can discuss death through comedy, he is also able to discuss

law, class differences, and government through the same lens, “One of the theories of

metaphor is that its roots are found in taboo. What cannot be faced directly is approached

obliquely” (Charney 81). Shakespeare “arrays the politics of race, class and gender

around this distinction between what is natural and absolute, and what is imposed by

human preconceptions” (Holland 87). Comedies are able to discuss class conflict without

belittling the poor, “For Elizabethans the history of comedy in the theatre was inseparable

from that of class conflict” (Maslen 5). The films of Chaplin, Sturges, and the Marx

Brothers all exploit the nature of encounters between people of different classes.

Shakespeare often used foreign settings in order to criticize his own government

without becoming too overt, “Four plays – The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of

Venice, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest – turn dramatically on legal or political

questions” (Leggatt 198). In much the same way, Duck Soup (Leo McCarey 1933)

mocks governments and war without directly mentioning any real countries by creating

the fictional countries of Freedonia and Sylvania. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his last

play and one of his most acclaimed, is laced with social critique:

The Tempest has exerted a consistently strong influence on readers and

audiences.... The Tempest’s high status within the corpus has never seriously been

questioned, and this prominence is reflected in the large body of creative works—

novels, poems, plays and films—where its influence is strongly felt.... [with]

issues of race, sexuality and gender (Holland 146).

Shakespeare is free to discuss social issues in The Tempest, because of its setting on an

unknown island.

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The presence of animals in Screwball comedies like The Thin Man (W.S. Van

Dyke 1934), The Awful Truth (1937), and Bringing Up Baby (1938) comes by way of

Shakespeare’s influence. For Shakespeare, animals symbolized:

a way of thinking about the true nature of man. We may trace in these comedies

sequences of man-animal associations that begin as spectacles enhancing comic

vision and lead to revelations that, in bringing men ever closer to animals, work to

dismantle the traditional hierarchy and put an end to laughter. In each case the

animals are both objects of attention and agents of revelation (Charney 81).

Perhaps the purpose of the leopard, Baby, and dog, George, in Bringing Up Baby (1938),

or the dog, Asta, in The Thin Man (1934) and The Awful Truth (1937) is not for the

viewer to notice how the animal behaves, but how the human protagonists behave with

the animals. Philosopher Umberto Eco states that the act of revealing the animal

tendencies of human beings is unique to comedy “the animalization of the comic hero is

so important. The tragic hero cannot be an animal” (“The Frames of Comic ‘Freedom’”

2). Arguably, tragic heroes in films like those in The Wolf Man (George Waggner 1941)

or The Fly (Kurt Neumann 1958), can become animals, but only in the realm of Science

Fiction. Just as comedy encourages the viewer to laugh at herself and her own faults,

comedy forces the viewer to acknowledge how people can still behave primitively. As

we see in the Screwball scenarios that deal with animals, human beings’ natural tendency

to think of the superior status of the human race is made to look silly and totally

inaccurate when an animal outwits the protagonist. Often, the animal may appear as an

allegorical extension of the protagonist as the terrier Asta is to Nick in After The Thin

Man (W.S. Van Dyke 1936).

Impersonation in film comedy has had a lasting impression over the years,

whether it is Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis disguised as women in Some Like It Hot

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(Billy Wilder 1959), Chico and Harpo Marx both dressed as Groucho in Duck Soup

(1933), or Jack Lemmon seemingly taking on the traditional roles of a woman in The Odd

Couple (1968). Shakespeare’s comedies include many instances of deception and

imitation, “Falstaff is a multi-impersonator, and in this he draws upon a source of

pleasure, not exclusively and disjunctively the property of comedy, but anterior to all

other comic pleasure: the art of mimicry” (Charney 13), including gender-bending forays

into the “[s]exual disguise and the theatre of gender” (Leggatt 179). Often important plot

points revolve around a character that is disguised for a particular reason, which Mozart

later expands upon in his Cosi Fan Tutte and Marriage of Figaro. Recognize though,

that the place of cross-dressing as a part of performance in Shakespeare’s day was much

different from that of Mozart’s day and later eras. Male actors filled both male and

female roles in a Shakespeare play during his lifetime, making a cross-dressed man not

an unexpected joke, but something taken for granted as commonplace.

One convention that Shakespeare used, the “the play-within-a-play” (Holland 55),

returns in several Screwball films like Twentieth Century (1934) and in Sullivan’s Travels

(Preston Sturges 1942) as a film-within-a-film. Often the subject or situations of the

play-within-a-play function as a metaphor for the overall play.

Shakespeare’s comedies have retained their status among critics and scholars, but

the popularity of specific plays may rise and fall in cycles over time. In much the same

way, we find films that are praised by critics and yet fail at the box office, only for

audiences to rediscover it years later. For example, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer

Night’s Dream has never enjoyed great success upon the stage, but it is one of the most

delightful of Shakespeare’s plays” (Parrott 131). Here we see a prime example of the

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divergence from what appeals to the scholars to what appeals to the masses. Regardless,

of their popularity at any given time, the conventions that Shakespeare both adopted and

synthesized continue to influence new comedies.

A contemporary of Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is one of the

most praised Spanish writers of all time (Oliphant vii), especially for his creation of Don

Quixote, one of the world’s favorite characters of any genre, “No character in the

literature of the world was ever more comically heroic than the ingenious hidalgo Don

Quixote” (Torrance 144). Don Quixote does what the greatest social critics do by

breaking many social taboos (Torrance 162). Much of the humor of the character comes

from that which he imagines, “the polarization between dream and fact central to

Cervantes and his age is transcended” (Torrance 154), just like when the character of

Richard Sherman in The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder 1955) thinks of the women in his

life, or George Webber in 10 (1979), as his fantasy eventually becomes a reality.

In his writing, Cervantes presents a comic character that is genuine about

everything he does, “Don Quixote’s mad devotion to truth becomes heroic in proportion

to his growing consciousness of the obstacles in its path” (Torrance 167). Literary

historian Margaret Oliphant argues that for Cervantes:

His ridicule is perfectly genuine, not put on; no mask for sentiment... but as real

and natural as his laughter, yet never unkind. His true fun and hearty mirth, and

that delightful sense of the ludicrous, which is the foe of all false sentiment, are

almost too honest to attain always to the height of that more delicate faculty

which we call humour (91).

This quality of authenticity both of the comic characters’ demeanors and of their actions

is an essential attribute of many comic characters. The comic heroine does not see

herself or her own actions as funny. She behaves in a way that is logical to her—

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following the Principle of Comic Logic first mentioned in Chapter I. A great film

example of this is the character of Inspector Clousseau in Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther

series. Throughout his antics, Clousseau views himself as a gifted investigator, clever

sleuth, and shameless womanizer—not the bumbling idiot that the viewer and most of the

other characters see.

Don Quixote was (and still is) successful critically and popularly, “from the king

to the peasant everybody had read it. A universal laugh had rung through Spain, and

indeed over the Continent” (Oliphant 160). No proper study of comedy is complete

without it.

The Baroque Period

(Europe: 1600~1750 AD)

One of the major showcases for comedy in the last few centuries has been in the

form of musical presentations. The musical form that we now know as Opera began as a

reaction against the musical style of the late Renaissance period. Unlike the musical

works performed in the courts of monarchs and wealthy families, Opera was a public

presentation made of content that reflected the tastes of the expanding audiences. The

early Opera Seria, or “Serious Opera”, told stories of deities, demigods, and epic heroes.

These Opera Seria included three Acts and a prescribed number of arias per singer. At

first, the Opera Seria had no comic counterpart. But after some time, audiences became

bored with the strict structure of the Opera Seria and the esoteric nature of the characters

and narratives within them. As a response to this dissatisfaction, composers began to

write short comic intermezzi to present in between the acts of the Opera Seria. Unlike

the Opera Seria, the comic intermezzi featured characters to whom the common people

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could relate. Once again, as with Terence, we see one of the major aspects in the

development of film comedy: the influence that audience taste exerts on what comic

writers create. The plot of the early intermezzi usually came in a two-act structure (one

act between each act of the Opera Seria) and often involved humorous, realistic

situations, such as an older man trying frantically to woo a younger woman:

Just as every age has its own kind of opera, so every age has its own humbler

counterparts of the form, designed to appeal to persons of less wealth or less

cultivation. These stepchildren of opera have been known by many different

names: opera buffa, opéra comique, ballad opera, ‘intermezzo’, comic opera,

vaudeville, operetta, musical comedy, and so on. Whatever the name, all have

certain common features: they are less expensive than the opera, their social

standing is lower, their tone is more familiar, and many of them caricature or

parody the serious opera. They are the poor man’s opera... So far as artistic merit

goes they may be equal or even superior to the more pretentious form (Grout 5-6).

The unexpected happened when these comic intermezzi became more popular than the

Opera Seria for which the composers had created them to accompany. These comic

intermezzi evolved into the standalone Opera Buffa, or “comic opera”. One notable early

example of this form of opera, Giovanni Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, “has deservedly

maintained its popularity to our own time” (Grout 248). The Opera Buffa form became

highly popular, “Between 1749 and 1761 Venice saw nearly seventy new comic operas,

and during the century nearly 2,000 such works were presented in Italy” (Headington 78).

One could argue that the leading expression of comedy at this time, and the one that

reached the widest audience was in the form of Opera Buffa.

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Opéra Comique

(France: 1680~1800 AD)

In the same era, the French musical scene explored forms of parody and we find

the first use of the term vaudeville:

They used for the most part little popular tunes to which the authors adapted new

words—a process known technically as ‘parody’.... For a long time they

continued giving popular comedies in which the vaudevilles were the principal

source of music and burlesque of the serious opera a frequent device (Grout 255).

These forms of light entertainment soon developed into comic operas, known in France

as the Opéra Comique:

The term opéra comique occurs first in 1715... Spoken dialogue was always a

feature, just as it is in modern musical comedy. Voltaire praised [the composers

for]... ‘first making a decent and ingenious amusement out of a form which,

before you, did not concern polite society. Thanks to you, it has become the

delight of all decent folk’ (Headington 51).

As one can see through Voltaire’s praise, the Opéra Comique appealed to audiences of a

higher class when compared to the lower class patrons of earlier vaudevilles, much as the

American vaudeville attracted mostly low-income patrons. Consider that the visual

character, as well as the fast pacing and episodic form, of both the early French and later

American Vaudeville could appeal to likely illiterate French lower class audiences and

the barely English-literate immigrant American audiences. The performances could be

entertaining without a need to understand the subtleties of the language.

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British Restoration

(England: 1660~1710 AD)

The British Restoration emphasized a return to Classical style in both theatre and

literature, “In the comedy of the English Restoration, witty talk among the superfluous

leisure classes largely usurps the place of action, and sexual love overrides all lesser

concerns” (Torrance 179). Restoration Comedy has been described by literary scholars

as “witty, often bawdy and focused on sexual intrigue in fashionable society” (Arnold-

Baker). One important aspect of the development of Restoration Comedy is that it came

as a result of audiences wishing to focus on “the new sensations of the stage, actresses”

(Brown). Once again, as in Elizabethan comedies, writers could present strong female

characters that were the controllers of comic situations—but unlike in Shakespeare’s

theatre, female performers could now fill the female roles.

The Age of Enlightenment

(Europe: 1700~1800 AD)

In the realm of literature,few writers, save for Machiavelli, can claim to have as

much possession of dark irony and biting satire than Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), “Such

is the enduring power of Swift’s satire that ‘Swiftian’ has entered the English language to

distinguish a vein of savage, uncompromising, and powerful moral satire” (Serafin and

Grosvenor). The comic subgenre of satire was forever changed when “he published the

world-famous satire Gulliver’s Travels (1726)”, soon followed by “his ironical A Modest

Proposal” (Rockwood). Swift demonstrated how far straight-faced satire could really

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go, and multiple comedy films follow in his footsteps, most notably Duck Soup (1933)

and Dr. Strangelove (1964).

In the world of music, “child prodigy”, “musical genius”, and “one of the world’s

greatest composers”, are just a few of the dozens of adjectives one could use to describe

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). I would like to add to this list that he is also

one of the world’s greatest craftsmen of comedy. Comic Opera reached its pinnacle with

Mozart, “whose own Figaro and Don Giovanni show the new Italian opera buffa in its

perfection” (Grout 226). His trio of operas with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte, Don

Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi Fan Tutte, and his German singspiele, Die

Entführung aus dem Serail (with libretto by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner) and The Magic

Flute (Die Zauberflöte, with libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder) remain both popular

today and praised by scholars as prominent works. The recurring theme of disguises and

role-playing within comedy appears in both Così Fan Tutte (when the protagonists

masquerade as Albanians) and in The Marriage of Figaro (when the Countess and

Susanna trade places). Like the comedies of Shakespeare, Mozart shows a “passion for

carnival” (Solomon 356) as well as influences from “stock characters [that] populate the

Da Ponte operas and Die Zauberflöte” (Solomon 511). The “Buffo style attracted Mozart

because it dealt with real people” (Headington 103), unlike the Opera Seria style that

dealt with stories from mythology.

Mozart’s first major comic opera is the singspiel, Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

The German word singspiel describes the musical form that is essentially a mix of spoken

dialogue and sung arias, “The idea of Singspiel was that the story should be told in spiels

[dialogues] and the singers should sing the songs about the situation in which the spiel

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had put them” (Solomon 287). Mozart drew from “elements of Italian serious and comic

opera and of French Opéra Comique, as well as the warmth and earnestness of German

song. Moreover he created a work which, whatever its stylistic inconsistencies, is fresh

and youthful in inspiration, filled with vitality and beauty which have not faded to this

day” (Grout 292). On a purely comic level, Entführung is fast paced, has a simple plot, is

full of jokes, and contains many stereotypical Turkish characters (Forman 671-672), all

of which could easily sound like a description of an anarchic Three Stooges, Abbott and

Costello, or Laurel and Hardy comedy. Entführung soon “became an international

success” (Solomon 287) and it is still performed regularly today (Forman 670).

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro “was his most ambitious opera buffa until then”

(Solomon 302-303). Today, critics praise it not only as a first class example of the Opera

Buffa style, but also for the way it remains unique within the style:

For some people Figaro is just the best.... we can see some of the reasons why it is

such a triumph. First, its brevity. The units are on average shorter than in any

other Mozart opera—indeed nearly all operas.... The effect is to whizz the viewer/

listener along at a terrific speed on a switchback journey that delivers him already

dizzy with pleasure into the finales... Mozart’s Figaro, as well as being the great

fixer, is a more complex character than Rossini’s Figaro, the ingenious factotum.

He is jealous, insolent, hates his master and beats him at his own game. Not a

standard buffa character at all (Forman 439-441).

Indeed Mozart liked Opera Buffa because he could use characters that represented the

common people, “No characters in any opera give more the impression of being real

persons than do Figaro and Susanna, the Count and the Countess, Cherubino, and even

the lesser figures of this score” (Grout 285). In this way, Mozart contrasted with his

Italian contemporaries:

Whereas the Italian composers as a rule were concerned only with suggesting

bustle and activity and exploiting in every way the often crude farcical elements

of the finale, Mozart never loses sight of the individuality of his persons; humor

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than that of the Italians, a humor of character more than of situations, with that

intermingling of seriousness which is the mark of all great comedy (Grout 286).

Mozart presents the audience with a comedy that contains a sentimentality that Chaplin

would later replicate, “As so often happens with Mozart, the joke turns serious: we

witness a display of authentic emotion” (Robinson 44). In a matter of seconds, Mozart

can move the audience from laughter to tears, all without the audience ever feeling

cheated out of a good comedy. Early accounts of the initial success of Figaro are varied,

from “a great success” (Grout 284) to “a flop” (Forman 438-9). We do know that later

performances in Prague met with a better reception than the earlier ones in Vienna

(Headington 105):

To judge from the applause, calls for encores, and contemporary reviews, there

were already numerous indications of its sweeping future popularity....

Unfortunately, along with the bravos there was some hissing from the balconies,

and opinion remained divided. ‘The public... did not really know on the first day

where it stood,’ declared the reviewer in the Realzeitung. The end result was that

the opera was both a triumph and a disappointment (Solomon 303-304).

Some music historians claim that while Figaro was “enthusiastically greeted by” opera

scholars, it was “insufficiently favored by the majority of operagoers, who preferred the

more traditional and less demanding products of the Italian composers” (Solomon 425).

Despite initial success in Prague, Figaro did not become the international phenomenon

that it is today until the Twentieth Century, “Outside of Germany it was not widely

performed in Mozart’s lifetime. In the Nineteenth Century it had limited circulation but

not until the 1930s did the Mozart revival lift Figaro into the top ten” (Forman 439).

Since the motion picture has only been around for a little more than a century, we are not

yet able to see complete evidence of any long-term change in the critical or commercial

appraisal of a particular comedy at a centurial level, as we find for these much earlier

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works. However, some of the case studies in Chapter III will help to demonstrate

changes in criticism that can occur over several decades. Beginning with the renewed

interest in the films of Buster Keaton in the 1970s, we may be in an era of rediscovering

the merits of earlier film comedies, but only time will tell.

Today, “Many people claim Don Giovanni is Mozart’s best opera, even the best

opera of all time” (Forman 168), however this was not the case during Mozart’s lifetime.

Its premiere in Prague was considered a success, including a “glowing review of the

premiere at the Ständetheater.... Connoisseurs and musicians say that Prague had never

yet heard the like... The unusually large attendance testifies to a unanimous approbation”

(Solomon 421). However, once the opera moved to Vienna, it was seen as a relative

failure:

later notices indicate the gist of contemporary Don Giovanni reception. “Is such

magnificent, majestic and powerful song really stuff for ordinary opera-lovers,

who only bring their ears to the Singspiel and leave their hearts at home?” asked

one critic, adding, “The beauty, greatness and nobility of the music for Don Juan

will never appeal anywhere to more than a handful of the elect. It is not music to

everyone’s taste, merely tickling the ear and letting the heart starve”

(Solomon 425).

As was the case with Figaro, contemporary critics felt that the opera appealed only to a

select few and not the general public:

it was a flop and after a dutiful number of performances in its first run, it was

never again played in Vienna in Mozart’s lifetime.... During the nineteenth

century it lay pretty low until the 1880s when at last the world began to realize

that it was something pretty good. Today everybody knows it as a masterpiece

and it stands high amongst Mozart’s top four (the other three being Figaro, Così

and the Flute) (Forman 166).

The reader will see a film equivalent of this type of response with Preston Sturges’

Sullivan’s Travels (1942), which was not initially praised by many critics. Film historians

and audiences did not realize that it was actually quite a good film until decades later.

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Mozart’s final collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte resulted in Così Fan Tutte,

“with two pairs of lovers, a plot centering about mistaken identities, and a general air of

lighthearted confusion and much ado about nothing, with a satisfactorily happy ending”

(Grout 289-290). It is unclear if the story of Così is truly an original idea of Da Ponte’s

or if it is a story he found somewhere. It does, however, show the influence of

Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and Cervantes in its narrative structure (Forman 131). One may

recognize the motives of a wager over a woman’s fidelity and an act of disguise present

in the comedies of these three writers as well as in Così Fan Tutte. Although the

premiere received a “favorable reception” (Solomon 464):

Soon after the first performance of Così fan tutte the Emperor Joseph II died, and

all theatres were closed. Consequently, the opera had little chance to claim an

immediate place in the repertory, and it is really only in the twentieth century that

it has joined the other Da Ponte operas in the Mozart canon (Headington 107).

As I stated above, many of the comedies profiled in this chapter are only praised as they

should be after a couple centuries pass. Music scholar Denis Forman describes Così Fan

Tutte’s revival:

During the whole of the nineteenth century it was played very little. Then in the

1900s Richard Strauss ‘discovered’ Così, recognized it as a masterpiece and

became its propagandist.... Così is now, of course, in the repertory of all self-

respecting opera houses (Forman 131).

Così is an excellent example of a comedy that takes on a new meaning depending on its

audience. Its first audiences found it to be immoral, “For over a hundred years this

‘shocking and licentious work’ pretty well disappeared from view. The twentieth century

was not so much shocked as condescending” (Forman 131). Forman goes on to say that

if Così puzzles modern audiences it is because:

you can’t explain the plot of Così in terms of twentieth-century psychology. We

have read Freud…. Mozart, by being born a bit earlier, escaped this experience.

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To the eighteenth-century man the plot of Così would seem to be neat, funny and

true, quite in keeping with the current male view that women’s proclivity to sleep

around was widespread and reprehensible, whereas it was both natural and

socially OK for men to sleep around whenever they felt inclined (Forman 132).

As a film comparison, the gay reference in Bringing Up Baby (1938) takes on a much

different meaning for today’s viewers than it would have for its first viewers when it

premiered.

Mozart’s last comic opera, The Magic Flute, “that sphinx among operas” (Grout

292), was his opera that critics and audiences alike found mesmerizing, “The Magic Flute

was received with great enthusiasm by audiences” (Headington 109). Mozart biographer

Maynard Solomon states “it was immediately evident that Mozart and Schikaneder had

achieved a great success, the opera drawing immense crowds and reaching hundreds of

performances during the 1790s” (487). Mozart’s contemporary and fellow composer

“Salieri would be unstinting in his praise for Die Zauberflöte.... Haydn expressed his

indignation that so great an artist was ‘not yet engaged by some imperial or royal court’”

(Solomon 314):

the Flute was the biggest success of Mozart’s life.... the fame of the Flute soon

spread all over Europe. But the language barrier kept it to German-speaking

houses until the end of the century, when it was translated into French and Italian

and suffered the usual mutilation in the process.... But in the nineteenth century

the Flute cast its magic far and wide until today it ranks amongst Mozart’s top

four (Forman 412-3).

Mozart adapted the conventions of existing comedies to suit his comic operas, which in

turn went on to influence future comedians, including filmmakers. Consider the subject

of mistaken identity, as seen in Duck Soup (1933) when Chico and Harpo impersonate

Groucho. The same subject appeared earlier in Così Fan Tutte, when Guglielmo and

Ferrando disguise themselves as Albanians, and in The Marriage of Figaro, in which the

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Count believes he is flirting with Susanna but it is actually the Countess. The comedy in

Mozart’s operas continues to impact the comic writing of others and the scholarly writing

about comedy.

The 19th Century

(Europe and the United States)

Many would find it odd to see Jane Austen (1775-1817) listed amongst the great

creators of comedy, but here I present her as not only the first notable female writer of

comedy, but also as someone who today scholars still discuss as one of the most frank

and observant social critics:

In her own quiet way Jane Austen devastates our compromises and

complacencies—especially male complacency…. Miss Austen placidly

undermines the bastions of middle-class propriety. Her irreverence is calm, but

she knows… that one must not compromise one’s honesty (Sypher 247).

One would not seem to read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility in

order to enjoy an elaborate farce, but by looking to the Medieval definition of comedy

that describes comedy as a story with a happy ending, as in Dante, one can see that

Austen’s novels end with the joyful union of lovers. Austen has the keen ability of

capturing the humorous side of characters, as one would encounter it in everyday life,

“Her writing is noted for its wit, realism, shrewd sympathy, and brilliant prose style.

Through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life, she was the first to give the

novel its distinctly modern character” (Feldman 4). Feminist scholars describe how

Austen used comedy as a tool to speak out against social inequalities:

By adopting a comic frame of mind early in life... Austen paved the way for...

mature social criticism. Worldplay, jokes, and riddles taught... an essential

subversive strategy—to carnivalize language.... Austen wielded the power of

jokes and laughter as a means of self-assertion... the confidence... gained by

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joking... enabled [Austen] to apply critical humor to [her] situation ... in a sexist

society and thereby challenge the necessity of women’s subordinate status.

[Austen] used comedy as an outlet for aggression and as a means of social

criticism (Bilger 61-62).

Austen acknowledged the necessity of comedy for a person’s feeling of well-being. She

saw “comedy not only as an entertainment, but also as a strategy for coping with life’s

difficulties” (Bilger 33). The social convention that Austen probably criticized the most

would have to be the “marriage market. As women’s only path to social advancement...

skewed in men’s favor. To men belonged all power of choice; to women at most the

negative power of refusal” (Bilger 120). I do not have to emphasize how this quality

carries into film comedy. Marriage is fundamental to the narrative of films such as

Dinner At Eight (George Cukor 1933), It’s A Gift (Norman Z. McLeod 1934), The Thin

Man (W.S. Van Dyke 1934), and many, many more.

One of Austen’s greatest accomplishments in the realm of comedy is “the creation

of female ‘trickster’ characters” (Bilger 89). One example of this character in Austen

would be Lydia Bennet, of Pride and Prejudice, whose “transgressions take her almost

beyond redemption, yet she remains unashamed from start to finish” (Bilger 107). The

female trickster certainly exists in film, most notably as Katharine Hepburn portrays her

in Bringing Up Baby (1938), and to a lesser extent, as Myrna Loy does in the Thin Man

series.

Austen explored parodies in her later novels, most notably in Northanger Abbey,

which “satirizes literary fashion, mocking not only novels but other profitable

publications ‘with which the press now groans’” (Brownstein 227), “particularly the work

of Ann Radcliffe” (Brown). Literary critic William Deresiewicz makes a convincing

argument about Austen’s parody when he states:

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Northanger Abbey was a satire of the gothic fiction so popular in Austen’s day—

the exact same stuff she had taken off so raucously in her juvenile sketches. The

name was a parody of high-flown titles like The Mysteries of Udolpho or The

Castle of Otranto. (Northanger would have been the equivalent of something like

New Jersey.) Austen herself must have loved those books, in a perverse, guilty-

pleasure sort of way. She could never have lampooned them as brilliantly as she

did if she hadn’t been reading them by the bucketful—and you don’t keep reading

what you simply despise (86).

Like the reader, the author has to appreciate whatever is being parodied in order to truly

appreciate the humor. The respect and affection that the creator of parody must have for

the original source of the parody will be seen in Chapter III with Mel Brooks and Young

Frankenstein.

In the time since Mozart, composers such as Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; The

Barber of Seville) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848; Don Pasquale) succeeded him in

the crafting of comic gems. Rossini’s first well-known comic opera, L’Italiana in Algeri,

includes a “fantastic plot, lunatic finale... and [its] farcical Pappatacian order is an

hilarious romp, but a romp held together by considerable dramatic discipline and

theatrical nous” (Forman 341-2). Rossini’s best-known opera, The Barber of Seville,

faced difficulties at the beginning. An older opera setting of the same story already

existed, so when Rossini tried to present his “Barber in 1816 he had great difficulty in

overcoming the public prejudice in favor of Paisiello’s version” (Headington 97). In

addition to this, the opening night was a disaster, “Everything went wrong: the Count’s

guitar in the serenade was tuned to a different pitch to the orchestra’s: whistles and

catcalling: the evening never recovered” (Forman 52). Fortunately, the opera’s

reputation could only get better from there, with opera scholar Donald Grout calling it

“The high point of Italian comic opera” (337). Like Mozart’s Figaro before, “Both are

social comedies, in which we laugh at absurd conventions about class, sex, power, and

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property” (Robinson 8). One of Rossini’s most brilliant innovations was “a single comic

device: in all of them, Rossini achieves his desired effect by means of ironic imitation

and repetition. One character’s statement is transformed into another’s question, and vice

versa” (Robinson 45), a device that is replicated in the banter of many film comedies, like

the overlapping dialogue in the final minutes of His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks 1940).

Barber was not only popular with audiences, but also with scholars, for “In 1898, Verdi

wrote: ‘... Il barbiere di Siviglia, with its comic verve and its truthful declamation, is the

most beautiful opera buffa in existence’” (Headington 163). Forman describes the

longevity of Rossini’s Barber as:

The Barber took a little time to establish itself as probably the most popular and

most performed piece in the whole operatic repertory... The Barber has frequently

been written up as the greatest of all comic operas.... there are loads of quotes

from nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics hyping it up as ‘Rossini’s

masterpiece’, ‘the model comic opera’ (53).

Today, audiences everywhere are familiar with the music of Rossini, though they may

not know it, for Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes appropriated much of it. As one can

see through the Looney Tunes’ use of his music, Rossini’s operas present such a

complete view of comedy. Not only are the libretti and situations humorous, the very

quality of the music, with its twists and surprises, is comical.

The prolific Gaetano Donizetti succeeded Rossini in the genre of Opera Buffa,

crafting several successful examples of the form:

The last echoes of the opera buffa are heard in Donizetti.... His best comic operas

were L’elisir d’amore (‘The Elixir of Love,’ 1832), Don Pasquale (Paris, 1843)

and the French opéra comique La Fille du regiment (‘The Daughter of the

Regiment,’ Paris, 1840). Of these, Don Pasquale is fully in the buffo tradition, a

worthy companion to Rossini’s Barbiere (Grout 340).

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Music scholars now speak most highly of Don Pasquale, “the last true opera buffa to

remain in the repertory, as well as the best Italian comic opera between Rossini’s Il

barbiere di Siviglia and Verdi’s Falstaff” (Headington 170-1). Forman explains that

“Don Pasquale was an immediate success and has held its position as one of the top of

the pops in the Italian repertory ever since. Don Pasquale is apt to be hailed as

Donizetti’s comic masterpiece” (173). One can see many of the gags known to slapstick

films and the situations of the Screwball Comedies as being mainstays of Rossini and

Donizetti’s operas.

The Victorian Era

(British Empire: 1840~1900 AD)

Few time periods in the history of the Western World have seemed to follow so

many implied social rules than the Victorian Era. It was precisely for this reason that the

Victorian Era needed comedy—something that can exist outside of social boundaries:

To express in reputable language some disreputable idea, to take some scandalous

situation, some low-class calling or disgraceful behavior, and describe them in

terms of the utmost ‘respectability,’ is generally comic. The English word is here

purposely employed, as the practice itself is characteristically English. Many

instances of it may be found in Dickens and Thackeray, and in English literature

generally” (Bergson 142).

While one would seem off base labeling Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and A

Christmas Carol as comedies, one needs to note how Charles Dickens (1812-1870) does

craft many rich comic characters and situations. Numerous critics and scholars praise

Dickens for his humor. Dickens scholar Hesketh Pearson states, “Serious though

Dickens was... he could not help clowning when the humour took him.... the

preponderating virtue in Dickens’ work is the predominant virtue in Dickens: his

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inexhaustible comedy and vivacity” (177-307). English scholar Bernard Nicholas

Schilling describes Dickens’ style as having “a sympathetic attitude toward the

ludicrous” (13). Literature scholar Malcolm Andrews adds:

‘The qualities for which everybody reads and admires him are his humour and

wit’ wrote one reviewer of Dickens’ work at the start of his career, in 1837. After

Dickens’ death in 1870, [biographer] John Forster’s verdict on the writings was

simple: ‘His leading quality was Humour’....Who would have thought Dickens,

more than any other Victorian novelist, was famous for making people laugh,

loud and long? (185-186).

Early filmmakers, including D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, who also theorized

about effective filmmaking, often cited Dickens as a source of inspiration for the

multifaceted structuring of narrative. Dickens demonstrated how the reader could

experience concurrent action in a novel, a structure also possible in film, unlike live

theatre. Comic filmmakers soon adopted the narrative techniques of Dickens as Griffith

and Eisenstein had utilized them. Andrews credits Dickens’ comic abilities to “The

shock of incongruity” that “has long been invoked as one of the prime triggers of

laughter” (187) and goes on to say that his “comic techniques... are... pretty traditional,

but they are worked with an extra gusto and extra finesse by Dickens, and with his

distinctive comic timing: that is the difference” (Andrews 192). Note that Andrews here

describes Dickens’ use of the Principle of Comic Timing. In Dickens, we see comedy as

a relief from the pains of life. Like Chaplin, Dickens grew up in poverty and felt a

connection to the common people, pursuing comedy as a relief in the Medieval comedy,

which also appears in Sullivan’s Travels (1942). Chaplin, Dickens, and (to a point)

Sturges, were all populists who could approach social injustices through the lens of

comedy.

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Like Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Mozart before him, Dickens created many rich

comic characters:

by far the most remarkable feature of Barnaby is the character of Simon

Tappertit... Tappertit is a comic apotheosis of the ‘little man’ a century before he

came into his own.... We who have lived to see the ‘little man’ personified by...

Charlie Chaplin... can now recognize in the queer antics of Simon Tappertit the

prototype of what has amused us (Pearson 95).

As for character relationships, “Dickens abounds in women who are the curse of their

husband’s lives” (Schilling 120), as we see in W.C. Field’s It’s A Gift (1934). Another

notable Dickens character is Wilkins Micawber of David Copperfield:

Comic treatment of failure that is hard to distinguish from wickedness raises the

question of how Dickens manages to leave us with affection for someone whose

surface behavior is intolerable. Micawber may be, as [novelist] J.B. Priestley

says, the greatest comic creation in English except Falstaff (Schilling 98).

If laughter truly is a group activity, perhaps laughter allows the reader to affirm the comic

character. From a later Dickens work, Our Mutual Friend, he presents us with “Simon

Wegg... a masterpiece in the old style, done with all the old power; but the book is

packed full of genius and contains his best social satire” (Pearson 298).

In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens presents the reader with the perfect blend of

comedy and pathos for which Chaplin is often praised, “Throughout, comic events are

interspersed with Dickens’s moving indictment of society’s ill treatment of children and

the cruelty of the educational system” (“Nicholas Nickleby”). But even in the most

despicable of situations, Dickens is able to find a glimmer of hope, “Nicholas Nickleby is

nevertheless informed by the joyful energy that typifies Dickens’ early work” (Ousby).

Few authors would shape the philosophy of depression era filmmakers such as Chaplin

and Sturges—working with urban settings—more so than Charles Dickens.

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Romantic Period

(Europe and the United States: 1815~1910)

When we move into the Romantic period of art, literature, theatre, and music, we

find that, “Romantic dramatists preferred tragedy to comedy” (Ousby), which makes

sense in an era of industrial change, war, social upheaval, scientific and medical

discoveries, and changing national identities. If the reader considers that one of the

elements of Romanticism, personal feelings and individuality, it is not surprising that

comedy—which is an expressive form that is meant to be shared—should not catch the

attention of Romantic critics.

From the mid to late Nineteenth Century into the early Twentieth century, several

composers created notable comic operas. Bedrich Smetana’s (1824-1884) most popular

opera, The Bartered Bride, was also his first successful one (Grout 480). However, it

“did not immediately gain an enthusiastic reception. The gathering clouds of war may

have contributed to its failure” (Headington 248). Also, it was:

misunderstood by many critics; in fact he was bitterly upset when his opera was

likened to the operettas of Offenbach, then all the rage in Prague: ‘Did none of

those gentlemen realise that my model was Mozart’s comic opera?’ Smetana

much admired The Marriage of Figaro, and thought it ‘an unsurpassable example

of the most delightful moods and the most lively comic action without ever

ceasing to be beautiful or descending into triviality.... It is The Bartered Bride’s

liveliness that has brought its international success.... Smetana’s later operas have

a more complex and serious approach, and none has matched the popularity of

The Bartered Bride (Headington 249).

It is interesting that of all of Smetana’s opera works, it is the comedy for which he is

remembered best. Comedy makes people feel good, and one can always remember the

feeling that a comedy inspired.

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French composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) held the world stage with a

variety of comic operas, “works he termed either opéras bouffes, opéras comiques, or

operettes. All have spoken dialogue and are witty, brilliant satires on classical subjects....

A satirical bite in Offenbach gave his works a dimension that had once belonged to

vaudeville and opéra comique” (Headington 128). Offenbach was able to take the satire

of Swift and mold it into a musical form.

It is ironic that Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), who began his career with a

comedy—Un giorno di regno—that was a critical and commercial failure (Headington

210), decided to end his career with a comedy as well. With Falstaff, “Verdi did more

than justice to Shakespeare and surpassed even the finest of his earlier operas”

(Headington 209). Opera historian Christopher Headington adds, “if there was a better

way to end a career than with Othello, it was with Falstaff” (210). The public and critical

reaction to Falstaff is somewhat mixed, “Probably more people pretend to like Falstaff

(and don’t) than any other opera” (Forman 216). Forman goes on to say that Falstaff’s

success might have followed with the composer’s reputation and not with the opera itself,

“By the time of the first night of Falstaff, Verdi was held in such veneration that if he had

set to music the register of Paris cab drivers it would have had a great reception” (214).

Despite its flaws, “the opera has also earned the admiration of many composers,

including the young Richard Strauss... Strauss had no love of Italian opera, but all his life

he made an exception for Falstaff” (Headington 211). It is still performed today to

enormous popularity.

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Transitional Years

(Europe and United States: 1880-1930)

Much like the case with Verdi, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is known for his

tragic operas. However, his Gianni Schicchi, based on a character from Dante, is a

highly praised comic opera:

Gianni Schicchi is a little miracle. It must be placed alongside Boheme and Tosca

as one of Puccini’s top three.... we have in Schicchi pure farce set with gusto, zest

and an expert sense of timing, a feeling for the comic phrase, for the repetitive

joke, for the cod sentimental piece, and above all the breakneck speed of events,

which is the essence of farce.... all in all Schicchi is just brilliant

(Forman 287-289).

Like Puccini’s skill in comedy as well as tragedy, some of the most notable comic

filmmakers like Billy Wilder, W.S. Van Dyke, and George Cukor, could also succeed in

non-comic genres. One only has to think of Double Indemnity (Wilder 1944), Tarzan the

Ape Man (Van Dyke 1932), and Gaslight (Cukor 1944), to see this versatility in action.

The comic opera tradition continued with the works of three separate composers.

In Vienna, Johann Strauss (1825-1899), “the Waltz King”, composed Die Fledermaus,

with annual New Years performances still selling out fifteen years in advance, “In Die

Fledermaus Strauss produced what is perhaps the central work of the operetta repertory”

(Headington 279). Forman adds, “Fledermaus, was a hit from the word go....From its

first night Fledermaus has never looked back.... What happens if you put together a top-

class French farce with the composer of the very best Viennese dance music? The

answer is Fledermaus, a terrific popular success” (Forman 252). As we shall see with

several film comedies like Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) or Wilder’s Some Like It Hot

(1959), a comedy may be successful commercially and critically at its release and

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continue to be so. Often, as with Verdi’s Falstaff or Strauss’ Fledermaus, the appeal is

partly due to the comic creators and performers’ existing reputations. In the United

Kingdom, librettist William Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-

1900) collaborated on several comic operettas including The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S.

Pinafore, and The Mikado, “remarkable for their fertile melodious invention, bounding

humour and keen sense of timing. Although their first collaboration, Thespis (London,

1871), was a failure” (Headington 289). In a similar way, American composer Victor

Herbert created such comic operettas as Eileen, Naughty Marietta, and The Red Mill.

In the realm of literature, Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens; 1835-1910) was not

only an “exceptionally popular author during his lifetime” (Foner and Garraty), but also,

he still “ranks among the most esteemed and influential authors the U.S. has produced

and is widely regarded as our premier literary humorist” (Serafin and Bendixen).

Scholars credit his success to “his humorous manner, which some people found crude and

irreverent, and on his appealing personality” (Foner and Garraty):

His adaptable talents enabled him to master a wide range of literary forms,

including sketches, essays, short stories, travel narratives, and novels....The

Innocents Abroad (1869) scoffs impudently at tourist sights in Europe and the

Holy Land.... A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) retains its

satiric force... [his works] have earned him the admiration of writers and readers

of the modern era.... In the interim, he exploited his recent European travels for

another anecdotal mixture of factual matter and comedy, A Tramp Abroad (1880)

(Serafin and Bendixen).

Twain’s comic style relates to the social critique of Dickens and Chaplin, as well as to the

satire of Swift. In a later work, The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance, Twain proclaimed

the power of comedy, as scholar Ryan Simmons describes:

More than shame, however, laughter represents a potential source of agency in

Satan’s view. Explaining that humans ‘have a mongrel perception of humor,

nothing more,’ Satan goes on to discourse at length about this unfortunately

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unexploited capacity: ‘Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of

these juveniles and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For

your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—

laughter’....He genuinely seems aggrieved that people are not better than they are,

that they fail to pick up the unemployed “weapon” of laughter (135).

It is a terribly important fact for American film comedy that one of America’s greatest

writers specialized in comedy, particularly the ability to observe the people and situations

of everyday life.

Part of the next generation after Mark Twain, composer/conductor John Philip

Sousa (1854-1932) became quite a prolific writer of comic operettas, though today, the

general public and most music historians remember Sousa as the “March King”. Sousa’s

dream, in fact, had always been to be a musical theater composer, not a band conductor,

and it was his wish “to create a truly American opera” (Tommasini) that motivated him.

Despite this, many music reference texts do not even mention Sousa’s operettas in his

biographies.

He first gained experience with operettas by orchestrating various Gilbert and

Sullivan operettas (Sadie 67). According to musicologist Stanley Sadie, “Sousa’s style of

operetta can be traced to that of Gilbert and Sullivan, and to a lesser extent Offenbach”

(68). He also wrote:

“all the solos, duets, trios, choruses, etc” sung in [the] three-act traveling farce

comedy, Our Flirtations. It was most unusual for such a show to have a complete

score of new music, but the trade press was not impressed with this originality,

remarking “the music with the exception of two numbers is not likely to become

popular,” qualifying “not because it is not good, but because it is too good”

(Ganzl 1912).

Despite the critics, Sousa’s work on Our Flirtations and other arrangements made him

well known in the music world.

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Sousa wrote nine comic operettas “that reached production and many more left

unfinished” (Tommasini). Sousa even “wrote four operas to his own libretti: The

Smugglers (1879), Desiree (1884), The Queen of Hearts (1886), and El Capitan (1895)”

(Butterworth 425). His operettas written at the end of the 1890s were his most popular:

In its day, ‘El Capitan,’ which opened in 1896, was more popular in the United

States, ran longer and drew larger crowds than ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’…. on Jan. 1,

1900, the night “Chris and the Wonderful Lamp,” Sousa’s American retelling of

the Aladdin fantasy, opened in New York, two other Sousa shows, ‘El Capitan’

and ‘The Charlatan,’ were also playing there…That’s three shows running

simultaneously on what was then Broadway (Tommasini).

Music historian Kurt Ganzl calls El Capitan Sousa’s “one genuine musical-theatre hit”

(1912). Sadie adds that “El Capitan… played for four years in America and six months

in England and turned out to be the most important 19

th

-century operetta by an American

composer” (68). Sadie claims that at this point, “Sousa had reached his peak as an

operetta composer” (67). However, Sousa’s most successful operetta up to that point

would also be his last great success in the field:

in spite of El Capitan’s success, Sousa’s career as a composer of comic opera did

not flourish in the 20

th

century. Several of his pieces remained unproduced, and

on another occasion he priced himself out of a job…. The handful of Sousa scores

which did make it to the stage in later days did so for very short and unprofitable

seasons and El Capitan and, to a lesser extent, The Charlatan remained Sousa’s

sole musical-theatre references (Ganzl 1912).

Sousa’s last completed comic operetta, The American Maid, only had 16 performances on

Broadway before it closed (Tommasini). Sousa’s operettas fell out of favor with

audiences and critics just as silent film comedy was reaching the forefront of American

popular entertainment and art. Many historians attribute the failure of his final show to

the fact that it was the product of an era that had already passed in America, “by the time

we get to ‘The Glass Blowers,’ musical theater had moved on…. Sousa’s work must have

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seemed old-fashioned” (Tommasini). Sadie adds “by this time public interest in this form

of musical theatre had waned” (68). Not only had the style of musicals changed, but the

primary source of popular entertainment had shifted from the theatre to the motion

picture.

Musical theater scholar Tracey Chessum argues that his operettas receive little

notice today because they “are so tied to a specific historical moment that they become

impossible to revive without considerable adaptation”. A further explanation for their

lack of critical attention that Chessum offers is the fact that Sousa’s operettas were

mostly touring shows, which means that regional directors added or removed musical

numbers and dialogue, making it nearly impossible to find “any definitive form” of the

works—similar to the situation of many early silent pictures.

Sousa’s operettas represent a short-lived yet extremely popular form of comedy.

Once again, we see how some comedies seem to lose their mass appeal over time. Sadie

describes Sousa’s operettas as having:

an unmistakable aura of optimism perfect for the time… The operettas reflect

Sousa’s strong sense of propriety with no risqué wording or suggestive action.

Their librettos… are deliberately nonsensical make-believe…. Sousa’s operettas

remain period pieces, and except for El Capitan have had little success when

revived (68).

Sousa’s operettas and those like them still exerted an influence on the later anarchic

sound comedies of W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and

Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis—especially in the musical interludes of

the latter three comedy teams. One should note how easily aspects of comic musical

theater were absorbed into the comedy of the sound film.

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The Twentieth Century

(Europe and United States)

Although author Thomas Mann (1875-1955) used a lot of humor in his works, he

presented a dark humor and his narratives often resulted in tragedy, “Buddenbrooks will

begin amid the ease and gayety of success... Mann leads us gradually toward failure and

decline, the defeat of all attempts at improvement” (Schilling 194). Schilling credits

Mann with making a “conventional distinction between humor and irony: humor shows a

less intellectual and objective laughter than irony” (Schilling 194). Mann operates in the

same realm of irony as Macchiavelli, Swift, and Mark Twain, demonstrating how the

style of satire and irony was still a major factor of humor in the Twentieth Century.

One of the strongest influences on the film comedies of the first two decades of

the sound film came from the contemporary theatre, “The cinema turned to the theater for

material, and audiences were treated to the comedies of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and

George Bernard Shaw” (Landy 333). Many successful comedies of the day, especially

the Screwball Comedies are adapted from contemporary plays:

At the turn of the 20th century comedy gained stature largely through Bernard

Shaw, with his comedy of ideas. Although stage humour abounds in many times

and places, the 20th century commercial stage has been particularly hospitable to

frivolous entertainment that goes by the name of comedy (Ousby).

As literary scholar Ian Ousby’s statement alludes to, early film comedy not only drew

inspiration from quality comedies, but from comparatively poor comedies as well. As

novelist George Meredith explains:

These bad traditions of comedy affect us, not only on the stage, but in our

literature, and may be tracked into our social life. They are the ground of the

heavy moralizings by which we are outwearied, about life as a comedy, and

comedy as a jade, when popular writers, conscious of fatigue in creativeness,

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desire to be cogent in a modish cynicism; perversions of the idea of life, and of

the proper esteem for the society we have wrested from brutishness, and would

carry higher (16).

But what audiences accept as humor means that it is hard to escape from the “bad

traditions”, since it would mean having to alter audiences’ expectations:

how difficult it is for writers to disentangle themselves from bad traditions is

noticeable when we find Goldsmith, who had grave command of the comic in

narrative, producing an elegant farce for a comedy; and Fielding, who was a

master of the comic both in narrative and in dialogue, not even approaching to the

presentable in farce (Meredith 16).

This phenomenon was not confined only to the early Twentieth Century. Today, motion

picture studios produce low quality comedy series with little to no aesthetic value, often

featuring comedians with little to no talent. One such performer that I can think of is

Adam Sandler, who seems to portray the same developmentally-delayed character in all

of his solo ventures, like Billy Madison (Tamra Davis 1995), Happy Gilmore (Dennis

Dugan 1996), The Waterboy (Frank Coraci 1998), and most recently Jack and Jill

(Dugan 2011). As long as a picture is profitable, the studio will continue to make sequels

regardless of any lack of recognizable artistic merit or creativity.

Vaudeville

(United States: 1880~1930; British Music Hall: 1850~1960)

The style of performance known as Vaudeville began to appear just a few years

before the invention of the motion picture:

if…the classical norms (rooted in theatrical realism) were primarily interested in

narrative causality and character motivation, the aesthetics of vaudeville played

particular emphasis upon performance virtuosity and audience response.

Performers, who held sole responsibility for the selection, rehearsal and

presentation of the comic material, built the act to foreground their own

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performance skills.... Characters played a limited role, often reduced to familiar

stereotypes. Sometimes, vaudevillians invited audience awareness of the gap

between their own personalities and the stock characters they assumed, layering

identities to showcase their performance skills.... Vaudevillians directly addressed

their audiences, sometimes pulling them directly into the act, often adjusting both

the performance’s style and content to spectator response. The vaudeville

manager made detailed records of the spectator reactions to various acts,

measuring the performer’s merits according to the ability to provoke outward

displays of emotion. The act was, as a consequence, built to intensify affective

experience and heighten awareness of the performer’s skills and expertise; the

simple plot became a ‘string’ upon which loosely associated bits of comic and

musical material might be attached. Most acts built towards a ‘wow climax’,

closing upon a spectacular moment to maximize the audience’s final response

(Karnick and Jenkins 154).

As I stated above, the term “vaudeville” comes from the song parodies of Eighteenth

Century France. Vaudeville focused not on a narrative or order of events, but rather on

the performer herself. There was no director of the performances, aside from the owner

of the venue that would choose the order of acts and determine which performer received

the best audience response. This absence of a director left the performer as the controller

of timing, audience rapport, and content. Later in the Twentieth Century, the Vaudeville

tradition continued in the form of stand-up comedy.

Vaudeville, and the British equivalent of the Music Hall, had more influence on

the style of comedy film than on any other genre, “The comedian-centered comedy has

been most influenced by… one or several of the variety contexts provided by vaudeville,

burlesque, British music hall, the theatrical revue, cabaret, radio, and television” (Krutnik

23). The episodic style of Vaudeville introduced a performance rhythm that became

expected in film comedy and ultimately led to television variety shows:

The fragmentation and intensity of vaudeville shocked many middle class critics

and reformers, who preferred the emotional restraint and realism associated with

theatrical farce or ‘true comedy’…. If comedian comedy, as [film scholar Steve]

Seidman suggests, drew heavily upon the vaudeville tradition, the roots of

romantic comedy can be found in ‘true comedy’ (Karnick and Jenkins 154).

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With its widespread influence, the style of Vaudeville and Music Hall affected many later

filmmakers and theorists, including the great Russian filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein, who

wrote more about the art of montage than any other filmmaker or film scholar. He credits

the inspiration of creating meaning through the juxtaposition of separate elements to

Vaudeville and the Music Hall, “I think that first and foremost we must give the credit to

the basic principles of the circus and the music-hall—for which I had had a passionate

love since childhood. Under the influence of… Chaplin… this early love thrived” (12).

The rapid-fire delivery of antecedent-consequence, set up-punch line style of comedy that

audiences come to expect with film comedy has its roots in Vaudeville.

Another innovation that came from within the context of Vaudeville is the duality

of the comedienne as a character and the comedienne as herself:

Stylization… was a conventional aspect of many generic traditions, particularly

those which ‘descend from episodic and composite forms in the American

popular theater (e.g. vaudeville, melodrama). These genres allowed for a constant

play between storytelling and showmanship, characterization and performance

(Karnick and Jenkins 152).

By the 1930s, it was not uncommon to find examples of comedians, like the Marx

Brothers, W.C. Fields, or (for that matter) Cary Grant, who appeared in films

impersonating themselves instead of a fictional character:

Hollywood comedian comedy differed from mainstream fiction films in one

important respect: comedian-centered films were not organized simply in

accordance with the narrative-based aesthetic of classical cinema. They exhibit,

instead, a combination of fiction-making and performative entertainment

spectacle. In these films, aspects of the classical representational paradigm

coexist with a presentational mode of attraction that has its roots in such variety

forms as vaudeville and burlesque (Krutnik 17).

Of course, studios at the time could not help but encourage this trend. If a comedienne,

or more importantly, if her style, were popular with audiences, succeeding pictures

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featuring this comedienne were more likely to be successful, as audiences members knew

what to expect from the comedienne’s performance. Vaudeville also presented the

mindset that a successful comic performance should be judged not on the creativity of the

performer or the variety of his or her performances, but on the number of laughs that the

performer elicits.

The Motion Picture

(Europe and United States: Beginning ~1895 AD)

Since the birth of the motion picture in the late 1800s, film comedy not only

developed due to the influence of other art forms, but also within the film medium as the

techniques and styles of filmmaking became conventions of expression. Film scholar

Tom Gunning denotes Lumiere’s L’Arroseur arrosé (The Sprayer Sprayed, 1895) as not

only “the first film comedy”, but also “one of the first projected films” and “the first

fictional narrative film” (Gunning “Crazy Machines” 87-88). Gunning goes on to argue:

this early genre of short gag films plays a key role in shaping the tradition of

silent film comedy, it also has its own identity which differs in some respects

from what has been described as classical narrative film, the model that

Hollywood films, from about the beginning of the twenties until at least the

sixties, seemed to follow. I would also maintain that this early film genre helped

shape the later genre of film comedy, which frequently seems to teeter in

precarious position within the classical model. The rather deviant relation that

film comedy sometimes displays to the classical norms of narrative structure and

character development derives from an alternative model that begins to form in

this early period—the gag (89).

From this first film presentation, one can see the conflicting relationship between the

narrative structure and the gag.

It is important here to note that the film genres that we know today did not appear

fully formed, but rather developed gradually over a period of a couple decades, “[film

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scholars] David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson see the classical

Hollywood cinema as a mode of film practice which survived almost unchanged from

1917 to 1960” (Karnick and Jenkins 9). The major genres of the infant years of film were

melodrama, comedy, and historical epic. Comedy was successful critically, as well as

financially, “it is abundantly clear that the American silent film comedy was flourishing

in the mid-twenties, rivaling drama as the dominant from of cinematic expression”

(Crafton 106). In the 1920s, film reviewers and audiences saw the comic Chaplin (see

Chapter 3.1) as at an equal level as that of the dashing Fairbanks, “Silent films gave an

international impetus to farce, through the brilliance of Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy,

Harold Lloyd, and especially Charlie Chaplin” (Brown). There was no difference

between the comic performer and the dramatic performer. This trait of the silent era is

another reason why I have chosen to exclude the particular comedy films of this era from

my study of film comedy.

Some of the most influential comic characters and situations that are familiar

today come from the silent film comedies, “If we include the work of Jerry Lewis,

Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks within that tradition [of silent comedy], and maybe of Bill

Murray and Jim Carrey as well, the influence of the comedies of the 1920s has extended

to the present” (Wexman 73). As I stated in Chapter I, silent film comedy had true

universal appeal, as knowledge of the language was unnecessary:

McCaffrey… argues that what separates the great silent classics from less

satisfying comedies is the fact that the [silent comedians] were ‘concerned, first of

all, with the comedy character and the development of a well-motivated dramatic

story that sprang from the roots of the leading comic character (Karnick and

Jenkins 3).

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As was the case with Vaudeville, the character and her routine of gags is more important

to the silent film comedy than the narrative. However, film comedy would not remain

the prominent genre that it had been in the 1920s:

as feature-film narratives became the industry norm, however, comic films tended

to lag behind dramatic films, retaining aspects of the earlier ‘cinema of

attractions’ even as the classical Hollywood norms came to dominate film

production (Karnick and Jenkins 157).

While audiences seem to be forgiving of dramatic films that reuse plot elements and

character identities from film to film, audiences immediately notice when the same gag or

comic situation is reused:

Unlike ‘mainstream’ dramatic cinema, which progressed rapidly through styles,

techniques and stories, nothing was discarded in slapstick. Camera tricks

perfected by Méliès and Zecca are still in evidence a quarter-century later; music

hall turns that were hoary when Chaplin, Linder, and Keaton introduced them to

cinema in the teens were still eliciting laughs by those clowns and others at the

end of the silent period. We are forced to ask, if gags were so scorned, then why

did the gag film linger on for so long, an important mode of cinematic discourse

for at least forty years? And is there not something perverse about arguing that

what is ‘wrong’ with a film form is that which defines it to begin with?

(Crafton 107).

As I stated before, similar gags not only kept their impact over a period of a couple

decades, but rather for centuries. Consider the influence of Vaudeville’s episodic

structure on film comedy, and how the medium of film allowed for the filmmaker to

insert gags at any moment of the film. A gag recycled from earlier films may even recur

in the same film, if the context allows.

As I mentioned in Chapter I, film comedy changed style more drastically than any

other genre out of necessity, “The transition to sound led Hollywood to a new

reconciliation with the vaudeville aesthetic” (Karnick and Jenkins 158), meaning that

verbal comedy became the main form of comic expression. Comic style also became

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more diverse as the homogenous style of slapstick comedy branched out into “comedian

comedies” and Screwball comedies, “Perhaps the most vital of silent genres, slapstick

comedy, with its fundamental visual component, was replaced in the thirties by the

anarchic dialogue comedies of the Marx Brothers (see Chapter 3.2) and W.C. Fields and

the ‘screwball’ comedies of such directors as Frank Capra (see Chapter 3.3) and Howard

Hawks (chapter 3.4)” (Cook 262). But verbal comedy did not eliminate all forms of

physical comedy, as some of the most successful comedians developed trademarks with

their physical mannerisms:

The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, and

Marie Dressler—each had some special quality of voice and personality that

found an immediate response in audiences around the world. Their humor was

verbal, but it also had a strong visual quality (Knight 143).

Indeed, physical comic styles did not die completely in favor of purely verbal comedy.

Rather, they remained ever present, synthesizing a greater comic impact than verbal

comedy could alone.

In the 1930s, comedy did not simply coexist with drama, it complemented it, “The

vitality of these comic performers can be accounted for by the greater closeness of their

comedy to everyday and commonplace experience than that achieved by melodrama

(Landy 332). Of British films in the 1930’s and 1940’s, philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin

states “all high and serious genres… were drenched in conventionality, hypocrisy, and

falsification, laughter alone remained uninfected” (Landy 332). Sometimes only comedy

is daring enough to show society as it really is.

The next major technical innovation after the sound film was television, which

became the primary showcase for comedy in the 1950s. As a result of this transition,

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among other causes, few notable film comedies came from American studios in the 1950s

when compared to other decades:

Symptomatically, comedy was in particularly short supply during the fifties,

especially the topical comedy that ridicules or satirizes the world around us—the

kind of comedy epitomized by the Marx Brothers on the one hand and by Preston

Sturges [See Chapter 3.5] on the other… during the McCarthy years, nobody felt

like laughing (Knight 254).

In Chapter III, I shall go into detail about the comedy films of this era. However, for now

I will argue that the most successful American comic director of the 1950s would have to

be Billy Wilder (see Chapter 3.7). His definitive comedies The Seven Year Itch (1955)

and Some Like It Hot (1959), described by some film scholars as “sex comedies”, form

practically a subgenre of their own. Also, I would argue that none other than Marilyn

Monroe was the most successful American comic film performer of the 1950s. Nearly

every comedy film in which she starred was a commercial and critical success, in part

because she worked with some of the most critically acclaimed directors of the time.

Keep in mind that, although she has now been dead for fifty years, she remains one of the

most popular cultural icons. Licensing fees for the use of her likeness alone “reportedly

nets the Monroe estate about $2 million a year” (IMDb). Her legacy is indisputable as is

her influence on American popular culture and on comedy.

While the American film industry suffered during the Red Scare of the 1950s,

British film comedy (see Chapter 3.6) found a sort of renaissance, a situation that I will

describe in more detail in chapter III. Ironically, the successful British comedies of the

mid Twentieth Century had their roots in documentary—a genre that relies on a strict

narrative structure, unlike comedy:

Michael Balcon, head of Ealing Studios, had always been a friend of the

documentary movement and favored fiction films that were distinctively British

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rather than imitatively American. When documentarians began to cross over into

feature film making it was to Ealing they came…. These British comedies turn

documentary seriousness on its ear (Wexman 138-139).

It seems as if the filmmakers of the United Kingdom had to wait for the output of

American comedies to stall in order for international audiences to appreciate their

distinguishing brand of comedy.

The two most influential British comic performers of the mid Century were Alec

Guinness, who was equally as comfortable in the historical epics of David Lean as he was

playing multiple roles in Ealing Comedies, and Peter Sellers, who was one of the

“‘Goons’, a zany comedy troupe whose off-the-wall humor inspired the later Monty

Python television shows and films” (Dixon and Foster 267). These two performers

introduced the world of comedy to the unprecedented feat of one actor portraying

multiple roles within one film—and sometimes within one scene, as Guinness does in

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), “The protean quality of Guinness and Sellers, their

ability to impersonate a large number of different roles within one film and from film to

film, distinguishes their work from that of most of their predecessors” (Landy 333).

Although I admit that many so-called “character actors” populate dramas, if one

performer were to play multiple roles in a single dramatic film, it would give the

impression of a low budget production that could not hire enough talent. But in the realm

of film comedy, the ability of one actor to portray multiple convincing characters in a

single film is a demonstration of that performer’s prowess. Note how this quality of

performance unique to comedy in the field of motion pictures comes from the theatre, in

which a one-performer show—whether comic or dramatic—seems to denote an

accomplished performer.

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By the early 1960s, British and American filmmakers seemed to return to a

uniform style of comedy. For 1960s and 1970s comedy, parody was the order of the day.

In the United States, Mel Brooks (see Chapter 3.8) imitated classic Westerns in Blazing

Saddles (1974) and classic Horror with Young Frankenstein (1974). Woody Allen used

an actual Japanese film that he redubbed in order to lampoon poorly dubbed foreign films

in What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) and he parodied documentaries with Take The Money

and Run (1969) and Zelig (1983). The team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry

Zucker satirized the disaster movies that had become popular in the 1970s, including

notable entries like Airport (George Seaton 1970), The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald

Neame 1972), Earthquake (Mark Robson 1974), and The Towering Inferno (John

Guillermin and Irwin Allen 1974), with their critically acclaimed Airplane! (1980).

Although some scholars may argue that Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964)

parodies Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe (1964), I disagree with this assessment. Kubrick

released Dr. Strangelove in January 1964, while Lumet released his film in October

1964—nearly a year later (IMDb). It is quite possible that Kubrick had read the novel

Fail-Safe (published 1962) and was aware that a film version of the novel was in the

works (IMDb). However, if Kubrick had wanted his film to function as a parody of Fail-

Safe, he would have waited for Lumet to release the aforementioned film. In addition,

the credits of Dr. Strangelove clearly attribute the story to Peter George’s novel Red Alert

(published 1958). For these reasons, I believe that Dr. Strangelove is not part of the

parody tradition. Instead, it most closely follows the methods of the Anarchic Comedies.

Concurrently, versatile filmmaker Blake Edwards (see Chapter 3.9) parodied the James

Bond franchise with a series of films beginning with The Pink Panther (1963). The

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success of this series owes much to the performances of Peter Sellers and to the music of

Henry Mancini. In the 1970s, the Monty Python comedy troupe lampooned historical

epics in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python’s Life of Brian

(1979).

One curious point that I wish to make about parody, and upon which I shall

elaborate in Chapter III, is that so often the resulting parody is of a higher caliber of

technique and aesthetics than the original film that it parodies. Filmmakers begin work

on a parody with the assumption that the viewer will be familiar with the original source,

but a well-made parody can succeed on its own without requiring the viewer to have any

existing knowledge of the source. Most viewers will arrive at a parody knowing the rules

for the particular genre or genres that the comedy film parodies, “comic effect is achieved

if the rule is not cited but assumed as implicit…. To enjoy the violation, the rule of the

genre must be presupposed, and considered inviolable” (Eco “The Comic and the Rule”

273-5). As the reader will learn in Chapter III, the most successful parodies work

because they purposefully go against the rules of the parodied genre.

The 1970s ended with a return to romantic comedy as the primary subgenre of

comedy with films such as Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) and

Edwards’ 10 (1979) finding popular and critical success. Arguably, this trend continues

into later comedies, like Moonstruck (Norman Jewison 1987), Four Weddings and a

Funeral (Mike Newell 1994), Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire 2001) and more

recently, The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius 2011).

Film comedy has in no way developed within its own bubble. As we venture

forth into specific film case studies, the reader must continually question the influences of

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particular forms of comedy to consider why a film may be scorned when the source of its

inspiration is highly praised.

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III. COMEDY FILM CASE STUDIES

Case Study #1: City Lights (Charlie Chaplin 1931)

“A Comedy Romance in Pantomime” (The film’s subtitle)

Context

As I stated in Chapter II, during the silent era, Comedy was one of, if not the,

most popular and critically acclaimed film genres, “Some of the most distinctive

American films of the 1930s, as they had been for twenty years, were comedies” (Mast

“’Short History” 288). Criticism of silent comedy remained consistent into the post-

sound era, reaching its best clarity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “Perhaps more

words have been spent trying to analyze and interpret the performances of Charles

Chaplin, Buster Keaton and their contemporaries than have been devoted to any other

aspect of screen performance” (Karnick and Jenkins 150). The art of pantomime—the

communication of thoughts and emotions solely through the use of gestures and facial

expressions—and the art of film were intertwined at this part of the century.

Although the Stock Market crash occurred in 1929, the economic situation

continued to decline into 1931, the year of City Lights’ release, “when the situation of the

outsider in America had become totally untenable” (Ingrao 22). The character of the

Tramp became even more relevant as so many of the film-going public could relate to

someone down on his luck.

Although the first feature length, full-sound film was The Jazz Singer (Alan

Crosland 1927), throughout 1928 when Chaplin began production on City Lights, the

majority of films were still silent. By 1931 however, when Chaplin released City Lights,

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sound films had become dominant. As a silent character, the Little Tramp was the most

well-known motion picture character in the world, “Chaplin was certain Charlie, the little

tramp, was a man of mime, a character who could not survive in a world of words” (Mast

“Short History” 288) due to the fact that “Everyone, across the world, had formed his or

her own fantasy of the Tramp’s voice. How could he now impose a single, monolingual

voice?” (Robinson). Chaplin himself later recounted his feelings at the time, “A good

silent picture had universal appeal both to the intellectual and the rank and file…. Now it

was all to be lost” (Passafiume). Here we see what I first discussed in Chapters I and II:

the difference between the universal silent humor and the localized verbal humor. If City

Lights were to fail commercially and critically, it would mean a sudden fall from the top

for Chaplin, “as though the rug he had labored so long to weave was suddenly yanked out

from under him” (Kamin 124). Chaplin finally compromised by using synchronous

music and sound effects, but still removing any need for dialogue, “Chaplin survived the

transition by making no transition at all” (Mast “Short History” 288). Although other

films at the time used the same method of music and sound effects (288), Chaplin’s film

remains the best example of the technique.

Charlie Chaplin

One cannot find a text that discusses film comedy that does not mention Charlie

Chaplin (1889-1977), “Of the many illustrious alumni of the Sennett school, Charlie

Chaplin still shines above all the rest…. Few men have ever succeeded in becoming a

legend in their own lifetime” (Knight 31-33). It is important for the reader to understand

that scholars write of Chaplin as an artist, not as a comedian:

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Apart from the great merit which the discriminating found in the work of Chaplin

and his contemporaries in American comedy… there was also their originality.

These films were almost exclusively conceived in terms of cinema, not derived

from works of literature and drama, the source of the bulk of film entertainment

(Dickinson 33).

Many film historians write about Chaplin as one of the great creative minds, “like

Charles Dickens and D.W. Griffith, both of whom he greatly resembles, Chaplin’s vision

of the world was colored by a youth of economic deprivation, and he felt deeply

sympathetic toward the underprivileged all of his life” (Cook 198-199). Sergei

Eisenstein, the Russian director who was a contemporary of Chaplin, called him “a

master” and said that when it comes to juxtaposing comedy and pathos, Chaplin’s fusion

of these opposing elements… is unsurpassed” (27). This view of Chaplin’s artistic merit,

beyond that of an entertainer, helped shape his recognition as quite possibly the first

auteur in the film world, “[Sennett’s] transcendently brilliant protégé was, of course,

Charles Chaplin, whom George Bernard Shaw called the only genius at work in motion

pictures” (Wexman 31). Chaplin handled many of the filmmaking tasks of writing,

directing, acting, editing, and composing and had a “control over his films [that] would

become unique within the art industry” (Wexman 32). Chaplin was an auteur before the

impact of the French New Wave of the 1960s popularized the use of the term in film

scholarship, “The contemporary film director, then, has emerged as the most important

creative force in the making of a film….Only Chaplin and Welles foresaw this trend, and

indeed they functioned much in this manner” (Bobker 160). Through his filmmaking

methods, Chaplin set the standard by which scholars judge later auteurs.

Chaplin came from a family of music hall performers (Maland 23), where he

developed the physicality of his performances, his “consummate skill, and his comic

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mishaps… choreographed as carefully as any ballet” (Kamin 74). Chaplin described the

rhythm of his physical pantomime as a dance, and few performers have demonstrated

such subtle control over their bodies. Film scholar Lee R. Bobker claims “some of the

best examples of the use of movement are the films of Charlie Chaplin” (197). As the

reader will discover shortly, Chaplin understood that the internal motion within a static

shot was as significant to the medium of film as was the external motion of the camera in

capturing a dynamic shot.

Some film historians have criticized Chaplin for what seems to be his lack of

knowledge of film conventions. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, when comparing Sergei

Eisenstein to Chaplin, said “Eisenstein is all form and no content, whereas Chaplin is

content and no form” (Ciment). I disagree with these scholars’ assessments of Chaplin’s

filmmaking knowledge. Chaplin went against the established conventions of film

presentation not because he did not understand the conventions, but because he had

already mastered them and could create his own conventions. For example, instead of

following the tradition of the wide shot to establish a scene and the closeup to reveal

details, Chaplin preferred wide shots for his comic sequences, while he would only use

closeups in order to capture the expression on his performers’ faces in moments of

sentiment. Other scholars criticize Chaplin for what they see as a lack of editing.

However, many critics feel that his lack of cuts is a strength, not a weakness, and I agree:

the scenes remain hypnotic regardless of their length….Cutting can, however,

become intrusive and destroy the magic….we must believe absolutely in his

body’s ability to perform the feats it does. Part of the magic of the Chaplin world

is that it uses no cinematic tricks: it is physical perfection without trick. Editing

instantly produces the suspicion of trickery. Chaplin’s refusal to edit very long

scenes is a sign of both his artistic intuition and his assurance

(Mast “Comic Mind” 66).

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Other filmmakers do not hold shots as long, simply because they cannot. Chaplin alone

has the ability as performer and filmmaker to hold the viewer’s attention without having

to divert it through a change of angle. The cuts—when he does use them—are a textbook

model of invisible editing. To sum up Chaplin’s filmmaking prowess, I believe that film

historian Gerald Mast puts it best, “There has never been a better film technician than

Chaplin because Chaplin’s technique was perfectly suited to communicate what he

wanted. And that is as good as technique can ever be” (“Comic Mind” 67). Later Mast

adds, “Chaplin’s contribution to the cinema has much more to do with what he does on

film than with what he does with film” (113). Chaplin’s ability as a supreme artist rests

partly on the fact that he understood not only exactly what to show the viewer, but also

how to show it to the viewer in a way that made the technique unobtrusive.

Of all the comic filmmakers and performers, no artist has ever been better at

juxtaposing comedy and tragedy without detracting from either, “Chaplin’s entire career

can be seen as his search for that balance: his first tentative addition of melodramatic

elements to his comedy, his growing achievement… and its culmination in City Lights”

(Woal 3). At the end of City Lights, we have experienced an incredible emotional and

aesthetic experience, but we do not feel cheated out of a good laugh.

Production

The mood of City Lights was highly influenced by the works of F. Scott

Fitzgerald that dealt with themes of longing for romance and stability under the pall of

class conflicts, especially seen in The Great Gatsby (Maland 56). One can also see the

influence of Dickens as well as writer Elizabeth Gaskell on Chaplin’s themes

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(Matsuoka). As I stated above, Chaplin was the biggest movie star in the world as he

began work on City Lights, “he had established through his comic films of the previous

fifteen years a kind of ‘aesthetic contract’ with his enthusiastic audience” (Maland 17).

With this succession of films, his audience had high expectations for Chaplin’s next

work, and he was not one to disappoint. Several personal events influenced City Lights;

Chaplin’s second wife, Lita Grey, divorced him, in a settlement that cost him millions

(19), Chaplin owed millions in back taxes (20), Chaplin’s mother passed away in 1928

(26), and on a professional level, Chaplin was involved in a personal struggle against the

talkies (27-30). As for the preproduction stage of City Lights, the writing process was

rather brief, with the major themes already chosen, and the story developing as shooting

approached. While the narrative of City Lights was an original idea of Chaplin, many of

the gags came from earlier sources, including Chaplin shorts. The greatest of artists,

Chaplin included, always have the risk of duplicating previous work:

When Charlie and the millionaire drunkenly cause chaos in a nightclub, Chaplin

repeats the situation, indeed many of the gags, from such films as The Rounders

and A Night Out, both of which contain café sequences. But in the feature film,

the gags are modified by the specific circumstances that have brought Charlie and

his companion together (Mast “Comic Mind” 85).

As I noted in Chapter II, the same gag can successfully return again and again as long as

it is still able to elicit laughter.

Once production began, most of the filming took place on a several acre set at

Chaplin’s private studios (Maland 15). City Lights was Chaplin’s longest production,

taking nearly three years to complete, and “made with a degree of creative control

unusual in Hollywood, before or since” (Maland 13). Influencing later filmmakers like

Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, Chaplin had a hand in virtually every aspect of

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production. Chaplin was a perfectionist (Maland 18), “However severe Chaplin was with

others, he was always even harder on himself” (Robinson). He even took care to see that

the set decoration enhanced the personality of each character within the setting (Maland

80-83), going beyond capturing each character through just the actor’s performance.

Everything that Chaplin did involved thorough preparation and practice. His ease of

motion and “comic antics could look wonderfully spontaneous, but they were always the

product of days and weeks of meticulous rehearsals” (Bedell 4). The boxing scene alone

involved “30 days of rehearsal to create the choreography—and money—hiring 100

extras for the audience—to create this gem of comic pantomime” (Bedell 4). Chaplin

often directed through a process of role-playing, “Robert Parrish, who played the pea-

shooting newsboy in City Lights, described it well: He said [Chaplin] found it best to

show people rather than tell them” (Kamin 97). Some actors however did not respond

well to Chaplin’s style of direction:

The early scene in City Lights (1931) in which the blind Flower Girl offers

Charlie a flower haunted Chaplin for months, occasioning hundreds of retakes.

His anxiety focused on this scene for several reasons… but since he was

especially dissatisfied with the way Virginia Cherrill handled the flowers, the fact

that the scene so directly recalled his own flower selling after his father’s death

can hardly be ignored. Cherrill had the impression that Chaplin was the blind

Flower Girl when he acted out the scene for her, and, in a way which she could

not possibly have imagined, so he was (Kuryama 33).

The scene mentioned above is now “listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for

having ‘The Most Retakes of One Scene’. According to Guinness, it took a total of 342

takes to get the scene the way that Chaplin wanted it” (Passafiume). At one point,

Chaplin was so displeased with Virginia Cherrill that he fired her and attempted to

replace her, only to rehire her after about a week (Maland 49-51). Needless to say,

Cherrill did not think too highly of him after that incident, “More than 50 years later,

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Miss Cherrill declared: ‘Charlie never liked me and I never liked Charlie’” (Robinson).

Unlike so many of the other leading ladies with whom Chaplin worked, Cherrill only

appeared in one of his films.

One advantage of City Lights being a silent film is that Chaplin was able to have

musicians on the set in order to set the proper mood for each scene (Kamin 103). When

it came to scoring the film, Chaplin had to rely on the assistance and experience of

orchestrator Arthur Johnson, “Since he lacked the technical knowledge to write out the

music himself, Chaplin recalled that “I la-laed [the tunes] and [arranger] Arthur Johnson

wrote it down, and ... he did a very good job. It is all simple music ... in keeping with my

character” (Bedell 5). In addition to original melodies, Chaplin bought the rights to a

Spanish melody, “La Violetera” written by Jose Padilla, to act as the theme for the

Flower Girl (Bedell 5). While Chaplin may have lacked the knowledge to notate music,

he certainly understood how it should function within the film medium:

With his instinctive dramatic and musical sensibility, Chaplin knew exactly what

sort of music City Lights needed. “I tried to compose elegant and romantic music

to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave

my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this.

They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no

competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grace and charm, to

express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete.”

(Bedell 5).

To complete the soundtrack, Chaplin added several key sound effects—including the

sounds of speech for the opening scene, which were actually made by Chaplin himself,

marking “the first time that his voice was heard on film” (IMDB). Harpo Marx later used

the quasi-speech effect with his horns, as did the makers of the animated Charlie Brown

series of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Though Chaplin was intensely focused during production, he took the time to visit

with Winston Churchill, who “visited the set” (Passafiume) while Chaplin was still

filming. Despite the long production, and conflicts like those with Cherrill, “the finished

film betrays nothing of this effort and anxiety. As the critic Alistair Cooke wrote, the

film, despite all the struggles, ‘flows as easily as water over pebbles’” (Robinson). As

the reader will learn shortly, all of Chaplin’s time and hard work certainly paid off.

The Film

Showmanship is at its pinnacle when the speakers in the opening scene pull back

the cloth covering the statue of Peace and Prosperity and reveal the Tramp sleeping on

the statue, it “opens with the curtain rising on Charlie himself,” (Stewart 305). As Gerald

Mast explains, “A piece of comic business at the beginning of a film can color our

responses for the next two hours—or until the film informs us to alter them” (“Comic

Mind” 11), and City Lights’ opening does exactly. From the start, the viewer can see the

genuineness of every single action and motion of the Tramp. Once the speakers begin to

scold him for sleeping on the statue (3 minutes in), he attempts four times to climb down

from the statue. The first attempt leads to a sword going through his pants, the second

leaves him sitting on the statue’s nose, the third causes him to thumb his nose to the

crowd while attempting to tie his shoe, and the fourth attempt is finally successful.

Another example of the character’s genuineness appears later, at the restaurant (23), he

mistakes a streamer for spaghetti, but even so, he tries his best to finish it.

Chaplin goes against the cinematic convention of the establishing shot followed

by a closeup when he introduces the Flower Girl (6). He begins with a closeup of her

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face and then cuts to a long shot to reveal that she is selling flowers. In this way, Chaplin

alters the established visual syntax to define her as a young woman who sells flowers

instead of the much more objective alternative of a flower seller who happens to be a

woman. Chaplin uses closeups sparingly, as when the Tramp realizes that the Millionaire

is attempting to drown himself (11). In the first meeting of the Tramp and the Flower

Girl, the girl acts as the straightwoman. She keeps the same look of longing on her face,

even when she dumps a bucket of water on the Tramp (9). Along the lines of Dickens,

the fact that the Flower Girl is blind makes this touching figure that much more pitiable,

“depictions of disabled women in films... emphasize the characters’ complete passivity

and their childlike innocence” (Pramaggiore 351). For the plot of City Lights to work, for

the deception to occur, the girl has to be blind, “Blind, the young woman in City Lights is

immune to disillusionment, oblivious to the social [anathema] that Charlie’s performance

otherwise reveals” (Calhoon 391), making her “a screen onto which is projected the

pretense of invisibility” (393). It is even more jarring for the viewer and the Tramp once

she has regained her sight, and the Tramp’s identity is disclosed.

The entire sequence from the arrival at the Millionaire’s house (15) through the

night at the restaurant (25) introduces gags of a lower class character trying to cope with

an upper class setting, a theme that Dickens explored before Chaplin, and one that

became common fare for later audiences through various Marx Brothers films and Three

Stooges shorts. These antics include slipping on the dance floor (20), squirting people

with seltzer water (22), misinterpreting and interfering with a dance performance (24),

and stealing someone else’s dance partner (25). A lot of the gags in these scenes follow

the Principle of Comic Sense as The Tramp honestly does not understand the social cues.

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The qualities of the upper class are seen as excess and leisure, often employing the

Principle of Comic Logic. When intoxicated, the Millionaire shows no restraint: he

refers to the Tramp as “my friend” (13) and “my guest” (17) without even knowing his

name, he seems to throw parties for little reasons, and he travels to Europe without any

stated purpose (41). Chaplin often represents the actions of the upper class through fast,

disorganized music. The Millionaire’s friendship causes the Tramp to feel as if he has

unlimited wealth as well, as he demonstrates when he buys all of the Flower Girl’s stock

for the day and then orders the butler to take them inside (29). The presence of fresh fruit

for the taking at the Millionaire’s house offers a tempting allurement for the Tramp (42).

Psychologist Donald Goodwin states that “Charlie Chaplin may have been the first

person to discover state-dependent learning” (317), alluding to the fact that the

Millionaire can only remember the Tramp when drunk.

City Lights is not merely an encounter between members of the upper class and

lower class; rather, it is a collision. A recurring motive for wealth is the automobile. The

Flower Girl assumes that the Tramp is rich when she believes that he arrives and departs

in a car (8). Later, the Tramp takes the Flower Girl for a ride in “his car” and her

grandmother assumes that “He must be wealthy” (31). Another motive of wealth is

cigars. It is clear at the restaurant that the Tramp is unfamiliar with cigars when the

waitress has to light it for him (20). Later, he mixes these two motives when the Tramp

uses the Millionaire’s car to follow a man with a cigar so he can shove another tramp out

of the way when that tramp finds the cigar on the sidewalk (34).

Many critics speak of how the narrative of City Lights involves two different

stories, that of the Millionaire and that of the Flower Girl. But as film scholars Linda and

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Michael Woal describe, both stories are deeply interwoven:

In the end, both stories, like City Lights itself, play with desire. In one, the

promise of friendship and wealth, alternately held out and withdrawn according to

the millionaire’s waxing and waning sobriety, is bitterly ironic. In the other, the

promise of love, held out and then threatened by the state of the girl’s eyesight, is

achingly sentimental. Charlie’s promise of wealth and friendship is abruptly

withdrawn. City Lights ends on the question of whether the same will be true for

his promise of romance (14).

Chaplin scholar Dan Kamin goes on to mention “The millionaire’s metaphorical

blindness” (127). By juxtaposing the two stories, Chaplin creates an end result that has a

greater impact than either story could have provided alone.

City Lights is an enigma, for one cannot truly call it a silent film. As critic Calhoon

explains, Chaplin “used sound largely to ridicule sound” (381). There is an absence of

dialogue, yes, but sound effects appear throughout. The earliest sounds that the viewer

finds are the mumbling of the speeches in the opening scene (1). Essentially, these first

sounds that we hear are pitch without diction—one-half of the two components of speech.

Other notable sound effects include the sound of a piano when both the Tramp and the

Millionaire bang their foreheads on the keyboard (18), the ascending slide whistle when

the Tramp slurps up his spaghetti (22), the whirling sound of the swerving car (25), the

bell during the boxing scene (1:01), and the gunshots (18 and 1:06). One of the most

significant sound effects in the film, that of the swallowed whistle at the party (37),

supports not only a visual gag, but an auditory gag as well. These sound effects would

have been quite a compelling gag at the time when sound technology was new and

sometimes of poor quality and audiences were getting talkative.

I feel that the absence of dialogue draws more attention to the power of Chaplin’s

music. Some is diegetic, as in the playing of the National Anthem (3), while some is

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nondiegetic, as in Chaplin’s use of the Wagnerian style of leitmotivs to associate themes

with different characters. The most overt use of the leitmotif effect is the accompanying

“La Violetera” to nearly every scene with the Flower Girl, however Chaplin uses the

same method to score scenes with the Millionaire. Every time the Tramp prevents the

Millionaire from committing suicide, the same hopeful theme plays, when the Millionaire

decides to spend a night on the town, the music becomes fast and rollicking, and once the

Tramp and the Millionaire return from the restaurant, the score quotes “How Dry I Am”.

By associating recurring musical themes with each character, Chaplin establishes a sense

of consistency in their behaviors and personalities.

Although we know that the Little Tramp is heterosexual, not only because of his

affection for the Flower Girl, but due to his admiration of a nude female statue (Kamin

71), there are many instances of male to male affection in the film, all played for comic

effect. Several times, the Millionaire (of course, only when drunk) and the Tramp

embrace (22, 28, 1:07) and even kiss (36, 1:07, 1:09). After a rowdy party at night, the

scene dissolves to reveal that the Tramp and the Millionaire are sharing a bed (40).

During the boxing scene, Chaplin imagines that one of his attendants is the Flower Girl

and ends up kissing his hand (1:03), “City Lights contains more homosexual joking than

any other Chaplin film, yet we never for one moment think that Charlie is gay” (Kamin

71). The gags are effective, because the viewer is never left with the opportunity to

seriously question Chaplin’s sexuality. Chaplin never uses homosexual gags as an attack

on homosexuality, but he does follow the established film conventions of implying that

male characters that are not afraid to express same-sex affection are weak and

effeminate—a trend seen in motion pictures throughout the century and frequently

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analyzed by film scholars. Consider that the Tramp often resorts to showing affection to

other males when he feels inferior or insecure, as he does with his boxing opponent (56).

Note how Chaplin shows the assumptions and reactions of the other characters to the

Tramp’s “flirtations” as unreasonable, as when the boxing opponent decides to change

his clothes behind a curtain—assuming that Chaplin must be homosexual. It is important

for the reader to know that homosexuality was more accepted by the heterosexual

majority in the 1920s and 1930s than it was during the following decades (Fleeson), and

therefore Chaplin’s audience would have been familiar with this type of humor.

Many of Chaplin’s visual gags work through the Principle of Comic Logic. Each

subsequent occurrence of a gag causes more humor, because the viewer naturally

assumes that someone could not fall for the same trick twice, and yet it happens again.

Every time what was originally unexpected repeats, the surprises compound. For

example, the Millionaire attempts to drown himself (10), the Tramp ends up in the water,

the Millionaire tries to help the Tramp out of the water, only to be pulled in with him (a

gag that has appeared in many comedies before and since), and the same exact sequence

happens again, nearly motion for motion less than a minute later (13). Another great

example is when the Millionaire ends up dumping champagne down the Tramp’s pants

not once, but three times (16, 17, 18). The result of this repetition is that the Tramp then

dumps his own Champagne into his jacket (18). Also consider the repetition during the

boxing match, as the Tramp, referee, and opponent perform the same dance-like evasions

multiple times (1:03). At times, the opponent and referee get so use to the motions that

they go after each other while the Tramp performs the role of the referee—resorting to

the Principle of Comic Experience. Once the bell gets caught around the Tramp’s neck

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(1:04), the same pattern of the Tramp falling down and returning to his corner happens

several times until the referee catches on.

From the opening titles, the characters in City Lights do not have names. Rather

they have generic descriptions “A Blind Girl, An Eccentric Millionaire, A Tramp”,

allowing them to take on the universal characters that they represent, as in an ancient

myth or fable. As far as comic heroes go, few can claim to be as virtuous as the Tramp.

He not only does what is right by helping the Flower Girl, he truly performs an altruistic

act by giving her all the money and never expecting a reward, as he never expects to

encounter her again (1:13).

The Little Tramp conveys so many of his motivations and the qualities of his

character through his subtle actions. His distinct walk appears throughout, most notably

at 14 and 44 minutes in, when seen from behind. In a similar way, we realize that the

Flower Girl holds importance to the Tramp, when he has to go back down to the bench to

retrieve the flower after he rescues the Millionaire from the water (14). We see his

aversion to hard work when he pushes a cart to pick up horse droppings and turns away

from a street down which an elephant has just traveled (44). A physical object adds to

our visual assessment of his character as he always carries a cane and even uses it to ring

the doorbell (32).

As a performer known for his exaggerated motions and overt visual gags (that

Principle of Comic Logic), much of the character development in City Lights happens

through nuanced means. We (and the Tramp) first learn that the Flower Girl is blind

when she feels for the flower that the Tramp has dropped (7), shortly thereafter, we (and

again the Tramp) understand that the Flower Girl assumes the Tramp is a rich man when

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she hears what she believes is his car pull away (8). Fueled by the Principle of Comic

Timing, this device of shared discovery between the viewer and the protagonist works so

well in the film medium, as the filmmaker has the power to visually reveal details to the

viewer as the protagonist sees them. Chaplin reveals the inner motivations of his other

characters through delicate means as well. When the Flower Girl returns home and

greets a pair of lovers that she passes, the following long closeup of her face in the

window indicates her longing for romance (10). Likewise, at the end of the film, the

viewer learns that the Flower Girl has the ability to see when she looks at herself in the

mirror (1:17). In an equally subtle way, we learn that the Millionaire wishes to kill

himself because his wife has left him with one simple line from his butler, “your wife

sent for her baggage” (15). To respond to those reviewers who describe all silent film

performance as exaggerated gestures and expressions, I can think of few films that

contain so many subtle actions as those in City Lights. One excellent example is when

the Blind Girl knows that her grandmother has received some bad news simply by feeling

her tears—an action that many viewers would miss if not watching for it (45).

The final line of the film also carries some of the most meaning out of any line in

the film (1:21). The Flower Girl recognizes her benefactor and says “I can see now”,

meaning not only literally that her sight is restored, but that she now understands who her

benefactor and love interest was all along. The result is ambiguity, the likes of which is

rare in mainstream American motion pictures. Film endings that were not perfectly

happy were quite uncommon in American film before the 1960s (Mast “Short History”

342). With her realization, “He at last appears to her what he has always been to us, a

lovable silent clown. And she, as we do, laughs” (Stewart 307). English scholar

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Constance Kuryama states that:

City Lights is Chaplin’s most subtle and comprehensive essay in impure comedy,

his only film in which pleasure and pain are so constantly and inseparably

mingled that neither Charlie nor the viewer is ever free of at least subliminal

discomfort…. Instead he hangs mysteriously suspended in a black, noncommittal

void, a classic Chaplin- esque counterpart to Dali’s Christ of St. John of the

Cross. (36-37).

Few filmmakers have been as praised by critics over the years for their perfection as

Chaplin has. However perfect the film is, there are still several noticeable

discontinuities:

Yet even the famous final scene in City Lights contains a significant

discontinuity.... he bites his forefinger in his close-ups. In the shots of her, taken

from over his shoulder, his hand is held lower. His hand position changes in each

shot of the sequence, and it’s easy to see why—if he’d held his finger in his

mouth for the reverse shots of her, the rose would have blocked her face and

ruined the perfect composition. So Chaplin allowed the discontinuity to stand

(Kamin 36).

Beyond the continuity error noted above and other continuity errors, the character of the

Tramp’s makeup is often clearly apparent. In some shots even, the viewer can see

Chaplin’s real eyebrows beneath his makeup ones (37). Kamin notes that this is

intentional on Chaplin’s part, “The contrast in tones is reflected in the changes in

Chaplin’s facial makeup” (127). The Tramp’s facial features are exaggerated with the

Millionaire and subdued with the Flower Girl. Chaplin was willing to break with the

established film convention of continuity in order to show something in a way that he

decided it should be shown. Just like with Chaplin’s unobtrusive cuts, audiences and film

reviewers are willing to accept the broken continuity because the discontinuity works to

express what Chaplin wants in the way that he wants to express it.

Maland summarizes City Lights by stating that, “the film is Chaplin’s farewell to

the 1920s….Chaplin leaves viewers poised between the two central images in the film -

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the flower and the coin -and invites us to choose between them” (103). Leaving us with

an ambiguity rarely found in other pictures, an ambiguity served so well by comedy and

how it needs no resolution and Chaplin’s ability to combine laughter and pathos.

Reception

Always the master showman, “Chaplin spent $60,000 of his own money to

publicize the premiere of City Lights in New York. $30,000 went to newspaper ads, and

the other $30,000 went to renting an electric sign for the front of the theater”

(Passafiume). Chaplin was very nervous about the premiere, “wondering if audiences

would care at all to see his ‘old-fashioned’ silent film. The answer came quickly: the

streets around the theater were jammed with people for many blocks” (Bedell 5-6).

Robinson adds:

The premieres were among the most brilliant the cinema had ever seen. In Los

Angeles, Chaplin’s guest was Albert Einstein; while in London Bernard Shaw sat

beside him. City Lights was a critical triumph. All Chaplin’s struggles and

anxieties, it seemed, were compensated by the film which still appears as the

zenith of his achievement and reputation (Robinson).

Film Scholar Maland describes the outcome of City Light’s premiere as “His special

niche as pantomimic genius firmly carved out, his new film a hit with the press and the

public, Chaplin had hit the bull’s-eye. As he began to tour the world, he was on top of it”

(110). As the dust settled, City Lights was a great commercial hit, it “earned Chaplin’s

studio twice what it cost him to make. From that standpoint, Chaplin’s decision to resist

the talkies was a resounding success” (Maland 109). It was clear that only Chaplin could

have made a silent film during the sound era:

“Nobody in the world but Charlie Chaplin could have done it,” a reviewer for the

Los Angeles newspaper The Record wrote following the first press screening of

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Chaplin’s City Lights (1931). “He is the only person that has that peculiar

something called ‘audience appeal’ in sufficient quantity to defy the popular

penchant for pictures that talk” (Passafiume).

Without Chaplin’s skill and reputation, a silent film during the sound error would not

have succeeded.

The critics of nearly every major publication in the United States agreed that City

Lights was a triumph. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times said that “It is a film

worked out with admirable artistry, and while Chaplin stoops to conquer, as he has

invariably done, he achieves success”. Box Office Magazine called it Chaplin’s “finest

comedy” and praised its story as well as the performances of its cast. Sid Silverman of

Variety felt that it was a good film but “not Chaplin’s best picture, because the comedian

has sacrificed speed to pathos” and had some doubts as to its “holdover power”,

wondering if its initial success was “novelty money”. In 1931, The National Board of

Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of the year, adding that it is “a challenge to

the talkies, a crucial event in cinema history” but “not Chaplin’s best but far ahead of any

other funny man’s best”. Time Magazine predicted “he, whose posterior would probably

be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other

man’s face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television”.

Notice how each one of these critics speak of the film in terms of Chaplin, and do not

address the themes that he explores. They describe the “novelty” of the film and its silent

qualities of gesture and expression. The reviewers that criticize it, do so because of the

relationship of comedy and pathos within the film.

As for the international critical reaction, Siegfried Kracauer of the Frankfurter

Zeitung said that “In it Chaplin demonstrates again his mastery of the language of

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gesture, a mastery that reduces the spoken word to shame”, however he added “It’s not

difficult to find weaknesses in the film” referring to a plot that he felt was not as strong as

earlier Chaplin pictures. Note how he echoes the above reviewers’ praises of the silent

performance techniques of gesture. Also, consider how Kracauer criticizes what he

claims is a lack of plot—showing that Kracauer does not completely understand

comedy’s necessary balance of narrative and gag. E.A. Corbett of the Edmonton Journal

concluded that “no one else in the world can take the same outline and make it compete

successfully with the talkies, because no one else can so fully occupy that delicious,

illogical, unreal world which Chaplin’s genius has created for himself alone,”

approaching the film in terms of Chaplin. Suprisingly, City Lights did not receive any

Academy Award nomination, which seems inconceivable considering its reputation

today. Tim Dirks, of the American Movie Classics Filmsite attributed the lack of

nominations, “to the pro-talking film Academy members, it must have appeared to be

reversing the trend toward talkies and advanced sound films”, which would make sense.

The contemporary film industry leaders’ advocacy for the “progress” of sound in 1931,

has a parallel with today’s film industry leaders, who seem to favor many pictures

because of the perceived revolutionary visual effects that they contain.

One of the most notable critiques of the film comes from James Agee’s 1949

article, “Comedy’s Golden Era”, written for Life Magazine. In it he praises the ending of

the film, saying:

She recognizes who he must be by his shy, confident, shining joy as he comes

silently toward her. And he recognizes himself, for the first time, through the

terrible changes in her face. The camera just exchanges a few quiet close-ups of

the emotions which shift and intensify in each face. It is enough to shrivel the

heart to see, and it is the greatest piece of acting and the highest moments in

movies (77).

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Agee not only focuses on the balance of comedy and pathos, but the qualities of the

performance inherent in its silent medium. Chaplin rereleased the film in 1950, sparking

another slew of analyses. Once again, Time Magazine praised the film:

Re-issued after 19 more years of talking pictures, City Lights is more impressive

than ever. It is immensely funny, at times touching, and its storytelling is so

eloquently visual that it makes most sound movies seem like the stunted products

of a half-forgotten art…. Every inch a classic, City Lights should endure as long

as anything on film.

I have been unable to find any explanation for why Chaplin chose to rerelease the film. I

speculate that perhaps newly-formed television networks had begun to program some of

Chaplin’s shorts, and this could have brought an audience demand for Chaplin features.

Also, his most recent release, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), did not fare well with audiences

and reviewers (TCM), perhaps prompting Chaplin to rerelease an earlier, more successful

work in order to regain his reputation.

In addition to film scholars and critics, many filmmakers have cited City Lights as

an inspiration. Both Stanley Kubrick (in 1963, Cinema Magazine) and Russian

filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (in 1972, Life Magazine) have called it one of their favorite

pictures. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert has reviewed the film twice;

reviewing it for a second time 35 years after the first review. In 1972, he said, “Chaplin’s

films age so well, I think, because his situations grow out of basic human hungers such as

lust, greed, avarice”. In 1997, he added:

If only one of Charles Chaplin’s films could be preserved, City Lights (1931)

would come the closest to representing all the different notes of his genius. It

contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical

coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little

Tramp—the character said, at one time, to be the most famous image on earth.

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In a more somber tone, he relates:

There was a time when Chaplin was hailed as the greatest popular artist of the

20th century, and his films were known to everyone. Today, how many people

watch them? Are they shown in schools? I think not. On TV? Not very often.

Silent film, the medium that gave Chaplin his canvas, has now robbed him of his

mass audience. His films will live forever, but only for those who seek them out.

The reader will learn that this is true of many such film classics. Ebert appears to be the

first reviewer who talks about the deeper themes beneath the surface of City Lights—

perhaps themes reviewers forty years earlier did not want to acknowledge.

Of the seventeen reviews written in the Twenty First century that I have compiled,

only one critic, Alan Vanneman of the Bright Lights Film Journal gave it a less than

favorable review, citing the “remarkably unfunny beginning”, the “numerous detours” in

the plot, and how “Chaplin leaves entirely unresolved how Cherrill will treat the Tramp

now that she knows who he is”. Looking at Vanneman’s review, we can infer that his

expectations for a comedy were misaligned. The “numerous detours” (gags) and the lack

of resolution at the end of the narrative are perfectly acceptable for comedy—in fact,

sometimes a lack of resolution is an even more fitting ending for a comedy than the

typical deus ex machina found in so many dramas.

The remaining sixteen critics praised the film, as dozens of critics had done when

it premiered. Four of the reviewers, Collin Souter of eFilmcritic.com, Jules Dassin of

The Telegraph, Wes D. Gehring of USA Today, and John Nesbit of Old School Reviews

particularly praised the final scene—a scene of pathos and not humor. Several reviewers

focused on the historical importance that it is one of the last silent films, and on Chaplin

as an artist. Dan Mancini of DVD Verdict called it “Chaplin at his best…. his last—and

arguably finest—silent feature”. Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich explained, “Below the

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surface of City Lights, there is an ache of nostalgia for the lost Eden of the silents that is

still palpable today”. James Berardinelli of Reelviews called it “the quintessential silent

film”, adding that “sound would have ruined it”. Jay Antani of CinemaWriter.com

added, “City Lights is a great gift to all of us by a filmmaker at a latter-day peak of his

genius. To see anything by Chaplin is to nourish the soul. Chaplin is good for the world”.

Other critics attempt to analyze the deeper meanings behind the narrative and gags of the

film. Following Ebert’s example, Dan Jardine of Cinemania noted its “universal themes,

such as the intoxicating blindness of love and the rejuvenating power of selflessness”,

speaking of the themes that contemporary reviewers did not address.

Many scholars have provided varying analyses of the film over the years. Charles

Silver of the Museum of Modern Art calls it “Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished and

balanced work”, focusing on the combination of comedy and drama in one film. Chaplin

scholar Dan Kamin, on the other hand does criticize it on a structural level, “City Lights

may have the best plot, and it certainly packs the biggest emotional wallop, but its comic

routines are inconsistent in quality” (Kamin 109). The foci of both scholars show

opposite ends of the same critical difficulty in approaching comedy. Silver seems to

appreciate it for its moments of sentiment, while Kamin seems to grade the value of a

comedy by how funny he finds the gags. They insist on comparing a comedy film to

something that is not—for Silver, a non-comic film and for Kamin, a comic Vaudeville

routine.

Legacy

Even Chaplin, his own most severe critic, felt that he had accomplished

something with his film, saying, “It’s one of the purest inserts—I call them inserts, close-

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ups—that I’ve ever done” (Passafiume), describing the final scene, “By the end of his

career, Chaplin prized City Lights. In 1973, Peter Bogdanovich asked Chaplin, ‘Which

film of yours is your favorite? Can I ask you that? Or do you have no favorites?’

Chaplin’s reply: ‘Oh yes I have. I like City Lights’” (Maland 11). As film scholar Andrea

Passafiume’s quote reveals, Chaplin was especially proud of his ability to combine

comedy and pathos. In addition to Chaplin’s satisfaction, Orson Welles, who some

authorities claim to be the greatest filmmaker of all time, called City Lights “one of his

favorite movies” (Passafiume). Chaplin had created something that became a landmark

film both commercially and critically, “And, today, some eighty years after silent films

faded into obscurity, he is still adored as perhaps the finest and most universal of all

comedians” (Bedell 1)—owing to his universal language of gesture. Arguably, City

Lights was Chaplin’s greatest success, “Never again would he bask in undiluted critical

acclaim” (Kamin 35). Historian Janet Bedell describes City Lights’ success as:

City Lights went on to tremendous runs throughout the world — and revivals for

decades afterwards. It has become a beloved classic, proving that a genius like

Charlie Chaplin could make his own rules and succeed handsomely, without

paying attention to the fashions of the day (Bedell 5-6).

Film historian Roy Huss credits Chaplin for inspiring the “theater of the absurd” (131).

City Lights has also inspired gags in many subsequent films:

Many of Chaplin’s visual gags in City Lights have been repurposed by other

filmmakers in such films as The Producers (1968) - champagne is poured into a

violin player’s pants - and Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend (1971) - a Charlie

Chaplin lookalike appears with a pooper scooper. The score from City Lights has

also been used in other films such as All Night Long (1981) and Scent of a Woman

(1992) (Passafiume).

In 1952, critics at the British Film Institute voted it the second greatest film of all time,

behind De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (BFI)—juxtaposing it with one of the quintessential

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film tragedies (especially during the European recovery from World War II when the BFI

vote occurred). In 2002, critics at the British Film Institute voted it one of the greatest

films of all time (BFI). In 2008, The American Film Institute declared it the greatest

romantic comedy of all time (AFI).

In the 1970s, critics began to rethink their opinions on Chaplin, especially since

more attention turned to Buster Keaton. Gerald Mast explains the situation as:

out of circulation for so long perhaps took some of the wonder out of the critics’

memories of Chaplin films. A whole generation of critics had never seen much

Chaplin. The status of film criticism in the 1970s is simply different from what it

was in the previous 50 years. Film devotees once had to grind their axes in

support of the artistic and intellectual equality of the motion picture. Chaplin was

the most suitable material for axegrinding because his films were obviously as

complex and intelligent as other “great art” (“Comic Mind” 64).

Fortunately, the availability of many silent comedy classics since the advent of home

video equipment has allowed most critics to realize that Chaplin truly was a genius. I

believe that Chaplin scholar Charles Maland’s closing argument from his study of City

Lights says it best:

In the longer lens of film history City Lights must be considered one of the

culminating masterpieces of silent film comedy, the film genre from the silent era

that has probably survived most successfully into our new millennium…. It’s a

crowning achievement, and it still breaks our hearts (116).

The reader needs to consider how the critics and scholars discuss the film. They focus on

it as a silent film and comment on Chaplin’s use of “gesture” and “expression”.

Likewise, they consider the film in terms of Chaplin’s ability to combine comedy and

pathos. To describe Chaplin and his skill, the reviewers use terms like “artistry”,

“finest”, “genius”, and “grace”. The criticisms of the film stem from the reviewers’ lack

of understanding of the necessary balance of narrative and gag in comedy. Several write

about the narrative/gag contrast with terms like “speed”, “plot”, “delicious”, “illogical”,

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“unreal”, “slapstick”, “pantomime”, and “detours”. Also, remember that of all the

represented reviewers, only Roger Ebert and Dan Jardine note the deeper, “universal”

themes that Chaplin explores in the film. These terms and foci of the critics presented

will serve in beginning to craft the critical language of comedy film criticism.

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Case Study #2: Duck Soup (Leo McCarey 1933)

“You’re a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you’re out

there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we’ll be in be in here thinking

what a sucker you are” (Groucho Marx, as Rufus T. Firefly).

Context

The first successful comedies of the sound era were the dialogue-driven

situational comedies of Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor, most notably Trouble In

Paradise (Lubitsch 1932), Design For Living (Lubitsch 1933), and Dinner At Eight

(Cukor 1933). The films depicted taboo social situations and most always featured

wealthy protagonists of the upper class. While the films were popular at the time and are

still critically recognized, the films have become quite dated and seem dull when

compared to the later Screwball comedies, which drew their foundations from the

situations and banter of these films. In a sense, these almost purely verbal pre-Screwball

Comedies were eclipsed by the Screwball comedies not much later in the decade.

At the same time, other comic performers were developing a completely different

style of comedy from Lubitsch and Cukor. The Marx Brothers—one of the most

influential comedy teams of all time—practically defined the subgenre known today as

Anarchic Comedy:

The Marx Brothers represented a shift away from the genteel slapstick mode

dominant in the feature comedies. Where the films of Chaplin… seek to integrate

comic performance and narrative, the anarchistic films present a ‘highly

fragmented and disruptive style of comedy’ (Frank Krutnik 20).

The major idea behind all Anarchic comedies is the struggle “between eccentricity and

conformity” (Krutnik 24), as one can see in W.C. Fields’ film, It’s A Gift (Norman Z.

McLeod 1934).

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The Marx Brothers

Starting as performers on Vaudeville stages and on Broadway, the Marx Brothers

(active as a group, 1912-1949) recognized quickly how film would broaden their

audience. In fact, they would often try out their material in front of a live audience

before shooting began (Library of Congress), this preview giving them live feedback.

Unlike Chaplin before them, the Marx Brothers were solely performers, not filmmakers,

“Lacking complete control over their material (and, later in their careers, not even

interested in such control), the Marx Brothers were dependent on their writers” (Mast

“Comic Mind” 281). Many film historians credit the Marx Brothers for being the first

comic performers to realize that true sound comedy was a hybrid between verbal banter

and physical gags:

The great silent comedies have no funnier sequences than many of those in the

Marx films….The Marx Brothers films revealed the key elements of American

sound comedy—comic physical types, suited to their comic personalities, suited

to the physical-comic situations, suited to the verbal wit. Comic talkies had to

move as well as talk (Mast “Comic Mind” 294).

Whereas, Harpo’s comic manner could have worked quite well in silent comedy,

Groucho’s comic manner could not have existed in motion pictures until the advent of

sound technology. The Marx Brothers were the first film comedians to realize the

synergistic possibilities of combining the physical and visual humor previously mastered

by the silent film stars with the new verbal possibilities of the sound film. Groucho’s

verbal style acts as a foil to Harpo’s physical style and vice versa. One could call

Harpo’s persona the successor to Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

Like Chaplin, the Marx Brothers spent weeks rehearsing gags to get them just

right, resulting in “comedies of conception and construction, brilliantly executed by the

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zany threesome or foursome” (Mast “Comic Mind” 200). Philosopher Jorn K. Bramann

claims that “Their films contain many features in a popular form which later became

fashionable among intellectuals in connection with the Theatre of the Absurd”

(Bramann). Indeed playwright Eugène Ionesco admitted that the “three greatest

influences on his work were Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx” (Huss 131). In order to

get the most complete picture of the Marx Brothers’ genius, one needs to consider the

contrast between their earlier Paramount films, which ended with Duck Soup, and their

later MGM films. The MGM films were their greatest successes commercially, but not

necessarily critically:

In the Marx Brothers’ MGM films, the move towards ‘formalization’ resulted in a

more emphatic ordering of their ‘disruptive’ comic performance in relation to a

clearly defined narrative process. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx operate as

figures who are peripheral to the narrative—they are not protagonists

(Krutnik 20-21).

Although some critics will argue for both, “Many fans think Duck Soup is the Marxes’

best film, and I agree, but A Night at the Opera, their most popular, contains four of the

funniest sequences in movie history” (Barra). Personally, I find A Night At The Opera

(Sam Wood 1935) equally as good, but due to space constraints, I have elected to focus

on Duck Soup in this study.

Today, the Brothers’ gags are just as effective as they were when their films

premiered, “Almost nothing has been lost from them” (Rowland 264). They continue to

entertain audiences and engage film reviewers, “No other comedies so reward repeated

viewings…. The Marx Brothers have never gone out of fashion and never will” (Barra).

So much of the Marx Brothers antics follow the Id drives theorized by Freud—the same

drives that society dictates are to be restrained by the individual. The Brothers’ total

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disregard of social constraints makes them so appealing, because each one of us has, at

one point or another, wished for the courage to break outside social boundaries.

Leo McCarey

Director Leo McCarey (1898-1969) specialized in comedy (Mast “Short History”

287). He began his career working on shorts with silent comedians, including Harry

Langdon and Laurel and Hardy (TCM). Groucho Marx claimed that McCarey was the

“only first-class director” (TCM) with whom they worked. Many of the physical gags in

the film came from the mind of McCarey, “McCarey seems more comfortable with

physical business than with words” (Mast “Comic Mind” 278). In addition to gags, the

political sentiment of the film was a result of McCarey as well:

Groucho Marx attributes the film’s strong satire on war to director Leo McCarey.

And with the rise of fascism in Europe, the release of Duck Soup did seem well-

timed, given that Hitler had just come to power about two months before the

film’s general release (TCM).

Despite the critical praise, McCarey never felt that Duck Soup was a good film:

I don’t like (Duck Soup) so much...I never chose to shoot this film. The Marx

Brothers absolutely wanted me to direct them in a film. I refused. Then they got

angry with the studio, broke their contract and left. Believing myself secure, I

accepted the renewal of my own contract with the studio. Soon, the Marx

Brothers were reconciled with (Paramount)...and I found myself in the process of

directing the Marx Brothers. The most surprising thing about this film was that I

succeeded in not going crazy, for I really did not want to work with them: they

were completely mad (TCM).

I should think that the Marx Brothers would have taken McCarey’s last line as quite a

compliment. After Duck Soup, McCarey went on to direct primarily romantic comedies,

including The Awful Truth (1937), one of the best of the Screwball Comedies.

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Production

Film Scholar Gerald Mast describes the making of Duck Soup as “striking in the

thoroughness of its conception… written by Kalmar and Ruby, produced by Mankiewiez,

and directed by Leo McCarey” (“Comic Mind” 284). Although he was the silent Marx,

“By the time Duck Soup was in production, Harpo Marx was the critical darling of the

intellectual community…. [that] considered Harpo to be the greatest pantomime since

Charles Chaplin” (TCM), proving that the art of silent pantomime was not dead. Harpo’s

popularity and critical praise demonstrates the influence of the silent film comedies in

that non-verbal comedy persisted among the verbal banter.

Of all the gags in Duck Soup, the mirror scene seems to have the most widespread

origins. Mast credits it to a Max Linder film, Seven Years Bad Luck (1921), which in

turn borrows many of its gags from Chaplin’s A Night Out (1915) (“Comic Mind” 38).

Wes Gehring of USA Today, however, credits it to “a 1926 Charley Chase short, Mum’s

the Word, which involved a character interacting with a shadow”. From wherever the

inspiration for the gag came, the Marx Brothers certainly performed it flawlessly and

made it their own. In contrast to the meticulous work required for some parts of the film,

other parts were improvised during filming, “According to The Marx Brothers biographer

Joe Adamson, the elaborate ‘All God’s Chillun Got Guns’ musical number was mostly

improvised on the set, as there is no reference to it in the… script” (IMDb), proving the

Marx Brothers had the talent to not only painstakingly prepare gags, but to go with the

flow when the inspiration was there.

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The Film

Duck Soup combines excellent examples of both visual and verbal comedy. In

every moment with Groucho, he presents verbal banter so quickly that often the other

characters have no idea when he has insulted them (35)—they demonstrate the Principle

of Comic Sense, as they are totally unaware of the consequences of his plans. In the

opening gala, he literally controls the scene while the crowd around him can only remain

still and quiet (9). On the other end of the comic spectrum, we have Harpo and Chico,

who perform several mostly silent visual gags. After noting the contrasting comic

methods of Groucho and Chico and Harpo, it is doubly effective that Groucho is involved

in the totally silent mirror scene (46). The viewer sees it from Groucho’s perspective to

suggest that any trick that he tries will work just as he believes it to be so. Without the

power that his verbal wit gives him, Groucho cannot control the comedy in this scene, he

is as susceptible to being outwitted as the viewer is. The gag obviously took hours of

rehearsal to perfect, but with their skill, the performers make it appear spontaneous. With

this gag, they utilize the Principle of Comic Timing, surprising the viewer along with

Groucho when Harpo is able to anticipate every move.

The humor of the film shows excellent implementation of all Four Principles of

Comic Effect. As is the case with City Lights, so many of the gags depend on the

Principle of Comic Logic, specifically repetition. Groucho falls for the same motorcycle

trick three times (12, 29, and 31), and never once appears to suspect it. One silent

example of this Principle is the hat gag (22) that involves Chico, Harpo, and the

lemonade salesman (Edgar Kennedy), in which repetition leads to frustration. We see the

same compounding through repetition that we see in City Lights—the gag gets funnier

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the longer that Chico and Harpo keep it going—particularly as it returns in other scenes

(22 and 32). A repetitive verbal gag is the singing of the Freedonian national anthem at

the most inappropriate times. Along with the Principle of Comic Logic goes the

Principle of Comic Timing, lulling the viewer into a pattern (as in the mirror gag), shown

splendidly when a slow pan of the foot of a woman’s bed slowly reveals her shoes,

Harpo’s shoes, and finally the horses shoes, followed by a shot of the three of them

sharing a bed. The same pattern of expected action works across several scenes, as when

Harpo goes to rally the townspeople, he decides to visit a woman (59)—and at this point,

the viewer cannot be surprised when it is the wife of the street vendor, who has already

clashed with Harpo several times.

An additional use of Comic Timing in Duck Soup is in the form of anticlimax, as

when the public waits for Firefly to arrive and he does not (5) and Comic Logic through

imitation, as when Groucho raises his cigar to match the soldiers presenting their arms

(6). A lot of the verbal jokes function on the Principle of Comic Sense, especially

Groucho and Chico’s use of homonyms or words with multiple meanings. Almost all of

Chico’s humor works on this last principle, best seen when he explains to the Sylvanian

ambassador about his experience spying on Firefly (16) and with Chico’s entire trial (49-

52).

Contrasting with the Marx Brothers’ gags is the stoic presence of Margaret

Dumont, who many critics argue was practically one of the Brothers. She is the classic

straight character, making the Brothers’ antics stand out even more. She is so proper,

looking into the distance when she proclaims her lines. She simply gives Groucho a

disapproving look when he insults her:

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As far as Groucho Marx was concerned, Margaret Dumont, playing the matronly

Mrs. Teasdale, was practically the fifth Marx Brother. She always played her

scenes with Groucho and the boys in Duck Soup and their other pictures as if they

were the most serious and dignified scenes ever put to film. Her ramrod straight

and sincere acting make the picture’s madcap humor and satire that much more

effective.... Apparently, Dumont truly did not get most of the Marx Brothers’

brand of humor. (TCM).

Dumont also represents the token wealthy widow, found in so many comedies, with more

than one man pursuing her, or I should say, her money.

In terms of the portrayal of ethnicity, the film implies that anyone with an accent

should not be trusted, which was very fitting for the general sentiment in the then

Isolationist United States. As a first example in the picture, the Hispanic dancer

introduced at the gala (3) is revealed to be a spy. Chico as well is seen as a spy in the

first scene in which he appears (12). As the narrative progresses, we learn that he is not

only a spy for Sylvania, but a double agent, serving either side as it suits him. In a way,

we can consider that Harpo’s lack of speech makes him as much of an outsider as those

characters with accents. Much like the approximated speech at the opening of City

Lights, Harpo speaks through horns that utilize pitch without diction (25). Not only does

Harpo not speak, we learn through Harpo’s encounters with texts that he is illiterate (14).

Harpo also seems to be socially illiterate. He disregards personal space, he rests his leg

on other people (especially other men, going back to the tradition of homosexual gags),

he cannot seem to keep his hands to himself, and if he gets hold of a pair of scissors,

nothing is safe, especially people’s clothing. Harpo is so like a child that while sneaking

into Mrs. Teasdale’s home, he cannot help but make noise, whether it is the piano, music

box, alarm clock, or safe/ radio (41-45). Like Chaplin’s Tramp, Harpo’s performance is a

combination of gesture and facial expressions:

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Lacan notices, in “the face of Harpo Marx,” which smiles as it destroys, cries

when it is forced to hear others speak, and ‘Gookies’ [as Lacan describes the

facial expression] when it reads. This face is nothing more than a mask, but a

mask that, unlike other comic masks, is a kind of metasemblance, one that is all

mask with no presumed person beneath it, only the sheer force of the signifier as

empty semblance (Flaig 106).

Since Harpo seems to act on instinct and desire, it would seem that his facial expressions

convey solely emotion without thought, making him difficult for anyone but a

psychoanalyst like Lacan, recognizing the conventions for non-comic heroes, to analyze

and to appreciate. It seems that scholars that study the human psyche are more able to

recognize comedies merits than those scholars that study film alone.

Duck Soup is a political satire, but instead of targeting one regime, it generalizes

with fictional countries to make fun of bureaucratic government and war on an

ideological level, “But Duck Soup is subversive not only with respect to particular

attitudes and values, but ultimately with respect to everything…. the worldview which

emerges through the shenanigans of the Marx Brothers is essentially no different from

that of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land” (Bramann). In the opening gala (10), Groucho

explains all his plans for the future of the country in song, but not with the specifics of

Hynkel’s speeches in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Years later, this revelation of

plans took on more ironic meaning, as it paralleled the situations of many Totalitarian

leaders, most clearly with the German people learning of Hitler’s plans from Mein Kamf

and still supporting him. As a mockery of this situation, the people of Freedonia learn

Firefly’s plans but still embrace his ideas and cheer him on. Later, we witness parliament

in session (18), and all the politicians watch Firefly play jacks—he fools around as we

imagine scandalous politicians must do.

A further criticism of government deals with class, for the only people we see in

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the government, at the gala (11), and at Mrs. Teasdale’s invitation-only tea party (29), are

all wealthy members of the upper class. The only lower class people we see are the street

vendor and the soldiers at the end. The people who keep the economy going and defend

the country are not the ones that rule the country, “Here, narrative sense and comic

nonsense are so tightly interwoven that it becomes impossible to separate one from the

other, which is partially why the film is such a devastatingly wacky portrait of politics

and war” (Flaig 114). Many scholars contend that the narrative/gag struggle inherent in

comedy conveys the flaws of politics and class better than a non-comic presentation

could. Gag and narrative merge in Duck Soup, because the whole country and resulting

war are practically gags in themselves.

McCarey uses many classic Hollywood filmmaking devices to establish plot like

displaying a flag before showing a country (1) and introducing Firefly’s presidency with

a newspaper story (2). With the “Help is on the way!” sequence (1:05), the filmmakers

poke fun at low budget productions’ liberal use of stock footage. The images begin with

subjects that make sense and progressively grow more ridiculous. As the troops march to

the front lines, the Brothers play their helmets like a xylophone (55). Years later, the

Monty Python troupe used the same gag in the Camelot song in Monty Python and the

Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones 1975). Blake Edwards used the safe/radio gag

in his Return of the Pink Panther (1975).

Reception

Unlike later comedies (including several case studies included here, see Chapter

3.3 particularly), Duck Soup did not have any difficulties with the Production Code. The

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Production Code had existed since 1930, but it was not strictly enforced until 1934

(Jackson). The Turner Classic Movies Database describes the reception of Duck Soup as

“a critical and commercial failure”. The films commercial failure makes sense when

considering the time in which it was released:

According to Andrew Bergman, after a “year of Roosevelt’s energy and activism,

government, no matter what else it might be, was no absurdity… If Bergman is

right, in 1934, people were still enamored with Roosevelt’s “Happy Days are

Here Again,” and weren’t in the mood to have all their conventions destroyed

(TCM).

Not only was it released in the midst of the Great Depression, but also audiences still

remembered World War I while the threat of a Second World War was on the horizon.

The critics’ reactions were not much better than the public’s:

Overall, Duck Soup received a critical drubbing upon its… release… Motion

Picture Herald took a chance when it praised Duck Soup, calling it “another

truckload of hilarious nonsense from the irrepressible comedy four,”…. Time

Magazine said it was no different from their other films, while The Nation

informed the reader, “Pretty near everyone seems to have agreed that in Duck

Soup the Four Marx Brothers are not quite so amusing.” The Nation elaborated by

saying that Harpo comes off as “tiresome,” Groucho is “badly provided for,” and

Chico and Zeppo have “less excuse than usual for their existence.” Ouch. The

New Republic and The New Statesman, intellectual publications that supposedly

embraced the Marx Brothers’ anarchic brand of comic mayhem, were painfully

silent about Duck Soup. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times declared “the same

tricks can’t be worked over and over again. The comedy quartet has a rather set

routine.” And as the New York Sun bluntly put it, the Marxes had taken

“something of a nose dive” with Duck Soup (TCM).

As a political satire, the political leanings of the publications that review it can partly

explain the starkly contrasted views of the film and some reviewers chose not to address

the political humor at all. Most critics at the time considered it a fair to poor effort, but

many reviewers also indicate that they would not expect much better from the Marx

Brothers—although it is unclear if the critics’ low expectations were for the Marx

Brothers specifically or for film comedy as a whole, since we have already stated that

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film critics have difficulty approaching comedy. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times

described it as “extremely noisy without being nearly as mirthful as their other films”.

Joe Bigelow of Variety gave the film a rather positive review, praising the way that the

Brothers were able to combine physical and verbal gags, “Radio has killed all the good

gags”. He adds that “Practically everybody wants a good laugh right now and Duck Soup

should make practically everybody laugh”. Harold W. Cohen of the Pittsburgh Post-

Gazette also presented a favorable review, saying “It’s good to see the madcap Marxes

back”. Some might argue that Duck Soup’s message was a success internationally, since

Mussolini saw it as a threat, “It may be apocryphal, but legend persists that Benito

Mussolini banned the Marx Brothers’ 1933 antiwar film Duck Soup from being shown in

Italy” (Barra). Tim Dirks of The American Movie Classics Filmsite adds that it was

“devoid of any Academy Award nominations”, which is not a surprise considering the

relatively poor reviews that it received. Mussolini seems to be the only one who

addressed the politics of the film, for the remaining reviews all address the comic

structure of the film, using terms like “noisy”, “not mirthful”, and “laugh”. Just as the

reviewers of City Lights approached it as part of a larger Chaplin canon, these reviewers

approach Duck Soup in the context of all the Marx Brothers pictures. Also, in the same

way critics praised City Light’s balance of comedy and pathos, these critics praise the

film’s balance of physical and verbal humor.

In a few years, Duck Soup became virtually forgotten, and the Marx Brothers’

career declined in the 1940s. As William Ewald described it, they “simply seemed to run

out of juice after a while”. Renewed interest came to Duck Soup and the Marx Brothers

beginning in the 1950s, mostly due to their presence on television, with further reviews

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appearing over the years. In these later reviews, many critics addressed the political

humor of the film, not only aided by the perspective of a different political landscape, but

also influenced by later anti-war sentiments, particularly during the Vietnam era. In

1976, Roger Rosenblatt of the The New Republic praised the film and the Smithsonian

Institution for presenting it once again. In 1978, John J. Puccio of Movie Metropolis also

praised the film, “It’s all quite zany and delightful, a mixture of clever wit, low humor,

and outright anarchy” regretting that “the world appears to have outgrown [it] or maybe

just lost sight of somewhere along the road to high-tech sophistication”—echoing the

contemporary reviewers’ praise of the mixture of many different types of comedy, and

describing the genre of Anarchic Comedy. He uses the terms “zany”, “delightful”,

“clever”, “wit”, “low humor”, and “anarchy” to describe the comedy of the film. Notice

how close these terms are to the ones used by reviewers in 1933.

Just like with City Lights, Duck Soup’s reputation has only grown and it is now

more accessible than ever in the Twenty First Century because of home video

technology. Many critics focus on the film’s longevity and continued relevancy,

especially in its exploration of politics and war. In 2000, Roger Ebert of the Chicago

Sun-Times commented on the innovative nature of its comedy, “Dated as Duck Soup

inevitably is in some respects, it has moments that seem startlingly modern…. The

Brothers broke the classical structure of movie comedy and glued it back again

haphazardly, and nothing was ever the same”. Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible

Celluloid, echoed Ebert’s sentiments, “The ridiculous reasons for going to war and the

awkward, hysterical war itself are especially relevant today”, as does M.P. Bartley of

eFilmCritic.com, “Duck Soup still has an edge today, because it’s the best film to remind

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us just how dangerous the Marx Brothers were”. Like earlier critics, many critics still

speak of the film within the context of the Marx Brothers’ overall style. Michael Koller

of Senses of Cinema called Duck Soup, “indisputably the Marx Brothers’ greatest film….

their most creative and anarchic”. John Sinnott of DVD Talk called it “Not only… the

best Marx Brothers film, but… also one of the best comedies ever made”. In 2005,

Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews gave the film an A+, dubbing it “The

Marx Brothers high water mark in film; their one true claim to a masterpiece”. Ian

Nathan of Empire magazine called it, “The Marx brothers on top form”. These reviewers

focus on the innovative combination of visual and auditory comedy in the film as well.

In 2004, Jamie Russell of the BBC praised it for its “delirious verbal banter… and a total

lack of respect for the rules”—two recurring devices inherent to comedy, as I noted in

Chapter I. Most Twenty

First Century critics that review the film inevitably compare it to

the later MGM pictures, and prefer Duck Soup because it does not include musical

interludes or a romantic subplot.

As for its detractors, Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com, complained that the plot

was too simple, “Take the comedy, leave the story”. Total Film Magazine echoed this

when it said, “the plot is just a flimsy backdrop” and that the “political nose-thumbing

now seems a little dated”. Obviously, both reviewers do not know how to approach the

narrative/gag balance of comedy. David Nusair of Reelfilm provided one of the harshest

criticisms in 2006, when he said:

the majority of this just isn’t funny (something that’s particularly true of an

excruciatingly prolonged sequence involving Harpo and Chico’s harassment of a

blustering street vendor). The conclusion, which is action-packed and mind-

numbing, does the movie absolutely no favors, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to

understand why this is generally regarded as some kind of a comedy classic.

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In Nusairs’ review, we can see that he does not know how to approach the Principle of

Comic Logic nor the way in which the film borrows conventions from the war subgenre.

The fact that more reviews have been written about Duck Soup in the past ten years than

in its first ten years of existence is a testament to the power of the film and to its

longevity.

Legacy

Duck Soup was the “last film to feature all four brothers” (Library of Congress),

in part because its public reception had led Paramount to end the Marx Brothers’s

contract:

when their satire of war and politics in Duck Soup (1933) left audiences cold,

Paramount let the zany team go. They found a new home at MGM, where

producer Irving Thalberg suggested that they counterbalance their patented brand

of insanity by adding a love interest to their comedies (Dixon and Foster 133).

Critics at Turner Classic Movies call Duck Soup, the Brothers’:

last opportunity… to be at their most outrageous. But more than them running

amok in front of the camera (and they had plenty of experience being let loose in

front of an audience in vaudeville and Broadway), the Marx Brothers made a

comedy that was cinematic…. The Duck Soup plot was absurd, but it was not so

ridiculous that you didn’t care what was going to happen to the characters. This

was one aspect of that Irving Thalberg did not abandon when he produced their

next picture, A Night at the Opera (1935), at MGM.

The Brothers’ films at MGM became their most commercially successful. Thalberg had

determined that the reason why the Brothers’ earlier films had not fared well

commercially was because there were never any characters to which the viewer could

relate. The Brothers themselves were too wacky to be relatable and Margaret Dumont

was almost too proper, so Thalberg incorporated romantic leads and more mainstream

narratives into the Brother’s MGM films. Even so, Zeppo, who sometimes played a

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romantic foil to the other three Brothers in their earlier pictures, decided after Duck Soup

to move on to a career on the business side of the motion picture industry. Perhaps

Thalberg had thought that the addition of romance to the Marx Brothers pictures would

have made them more approachable to audiences that were now accustomed to Screwball

comedies (see Chapter 3.3). Most film historians today agree, however, that the romantic

stories often detracted from the overall pictures, considering them to be inferior to Duck

Soup, the poster child of the Anarchic Comedy, that “features no sappy romantic

interludes that you would want to fast forward through, something that mars the MGM

pictures” (TCM). Later examples of this subgenre, including Dr. Strangelove (Stanley

Kubrick 1964) and M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970), were greatly influenced by it,

sharing many of the same themes, devices, and character types.

In the decades since the Brothers’ last film, most critics and scholars acknowledge

that Duck Soup was in many ways superior to the later MGM pictures. It is, “one of the

watershed films of American cinema. No less a comedy artist than Woody Allen calls it

‘probably the best talking comedy ever made,’ and uses an extended clip from it to

anchor one of his own later classics—Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)” (Gehring). Allen

states “If you were asked to name the best comedies ever made, and you named The Gold

Rush (1925) and The General (1927) and a half dozen others, Duck Soup is the only one

that doesn’t have a dull spot.” (TCM)—drawing attention to how a comedy handles

narrative structure. In 1990, the National Registry of Historic Films decided to preserve

the film (TCM). In 2006, Premiere Magazine named Duck Soup one of The 50 Greatest

Comedies of All Time (TCM) and in 2007, “The movie’s line ‘You know, you haven’t

stopped talking since I came here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph

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needle.’ was voted as the #43 of ‘The 100 Greatest Movie Lines’ by Premiere” (IMDb).

Despite the fact that many political scientists consider Duck Soup one of the greatest

political satires of all time, “The Marx Brothers denied [perhaps for the sake of irony]

that there is a single social intention in any of their films....” (Mast “Comic Mind” 341).

Perhaps, they wanted viewers to simply enjoy the film (political satire or not), exactly as

viewers continue to do.

Regarding the themes that reviewers address in their analyses of Duck Soup, the

most prevalent comments deal with the film’s innovation in the way that it combines a

variety of comic styles: “physical”, “verbal”, “anarchic”, “wit”, and “low humor”. As

with the reviews of City Lights (1931), critics cannot seem to disassociate this particular

film from the rest of the Marx Brothers’ pictures. Also, as was the case for City Lights

(1931), most of the negative criticisms focus on the narrative structure—not considering

the unique narrative/gag balance of comedy. For both films, no review seemed to address

the deeper themes of politics and war until forty years after the film’s release—perhaps

indicating a trend in comedy film criticism: critics did not look into the deeper themes

within comedy films until the 1970s.

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Case Study #3: It Happened One Night (Frank Capra 1934)

“Excuse me lady, but that upon which you sit is mine”

(Clark Gable, as Peter Warne)

Context

The mid-1930s was the age of the Screwball Comedy, when “the term ‘screwball’

itself became codified” (Karnick 125). This subgenre places its characters in bizarre

situations that compound as the film progresses, typically in a romance-driven narrative.

While some credit Howard Hawk’s Twentieth Century (1934) as the first Screwball

comedy, I feel that the style of Twentieth Century is much closer to the Lubitsch/ Cukor

comedies of the early years of the decade, and not the later Screwballs, “Screwball

comedy redefined film comedy in the 1930s…. Not only, was there an equal teaming of a

male and female star in screwball comedy, but for the first time the romantic leads were

also the comic leads” (Lent 327). Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night provided not

just the basis for every subsequent Screwball comedy, but for romantic comedy in

general, “The bantering dialogue and rapid delivery which characterizes screwball

comedy, for example, has been linked to the film’s overall conception of male-female

relationships” (Karnick and Jenkins 164). The film’s comedy is forever linked to its

unforgettable romance, as nearly every romantic comedy since reminds us.

Frank Capra

At the time, Columbia was not a major film studio. In fact, most people working

in the film industry referred to it as a Poverty Row operation. However, “Columbia had a

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major asset in Capra” (Landazuri), who delighted in stories of the average person, “the

little guy”:

The rise of the comedy of Capra coincided with the decline of the comedy of

Lubitsch….The Capra comedies are among the most valuable sociological

documents in the history of the American cinema, reflecting an era’s idealized

view of itself…. But 1933… was the year of Capra’s first great personal success-

Lady for a Day. And for the next eight years the Capra comedies (with scripts by

Robert Riskin) were the most energetic and stylish expressions of the American

audience’s hopes, beliefs, and ideals (Mast “Comic Mind” 259).

Capra (1897-1991) had a knack for creating believable, memorable characters, “Because

Capra people live in his films with complete sincerity and seriousness, his film world

seems saturated with human and comic (if not moral) truth” (Mast “Comic Mind” 265).

It Happened One Night is not only one of Capra’s funniest and most enjoyable films, but

also one of his greatest commercial and critical successes.

Clark Gable

Today, we remember Clark Gable (1901-1960) as the iconic, suave, rebel Rhett

Butler in Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming 1939), but before making It Happened

One Night, Gable was not the megastar that we think of today. Capra had originally

wanted Robert Montgomery to star in his picture, but Montgomery turned him down

(Weems), “saying the script was the worst thing he had ever read” (IMDb) and that there

were already “too many bus pictures” (Landazuri). Getting Gable was actually a stroke

of luck for Capra:

MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer made Cohn an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I got

an actor here who’s being a bad boy,” Mayer reportedly told Cohn. “I’d like to

spank him.” The bad boy was Clark Gable, who was becoming an important star,

and flexing his muscles. He told Mayer he wouldn’t play any more gigolo roles,

and he wanted a raise. Mayer would punish him by exiling him to Siberia on

Poverty Row (Landazuri).

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Capra’s relationship with Gable started off rough. When Gable arrived on the set for the

first day of shooting he said, “Let’s get this over with” (TCM). Little did he know that

the film would shoot him to superstardom. Film scholar Linda Mizejewski claims that

“Depression-era culture was ready for a high-profile masculine ideal” (99) and Gable

gave audiences just that:

Because It Happened One Night was far more popular than any of his previous

films, Gable’s ranking at the box office went from number 7 to number 2 by the

end of 1934 (just behind Shirley Temple, illustrating the appeal of family-friendly

stars at this time). For the first time, Gable was the object of female fan hysteria.

When MGM sent him on tour to promote his next film in 1934, he was mobbed

by 2,500 women at a train station in Kansas City. Women wept and handed him

articles of their clothing during his appearances in Baltimore, San Francisco, and

New York. Police motorcades escorted him to his film openings, and when he

won the Academy Award for his role as Peter Warne, his salary at MGM

doubled…. By the end of the decade, he was dubbed “The King,” Hollywood’s

top romantic lead, a fitting nod to his first important victory in movies (110).

In hindsight, Capra’s second choice for the character of Peter Warne turned out to be the

best. As I shall mention with several of the case studies, many of the performers in sound

comedies were not the first choice. This fact supports the argument presented in Chapter

I: sound comedies are the work of the comic filmmaker and not a comic performer for

whom a role was created.

Claudette Colbert

Unlike Gable, Claudette Colbert (1903-1996) was already a big box office draw

going into It Happened One Night. She began her career in theater, and her verbal

delivery allowed her to transition well into sound films (Pace). Her stature was made

quite clear by her salary that was “five times that of Gable’s” (Mizejewsi 110). However,

like Gable, she was not Capra’s first choice for the role of Ellie Andrews for, he

attempted to entice “Miriam Hopkins, Constance Bennett, Margaret Sullavan, Carole

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Lombard… Bette Davis…. Loretta Young” (Landazuri), and “Myrna Loy” (Pace) to

accept the part before settling for Colbert, at the behest of the studio.

Colbert turned out to be quite selective when it came to what she would and

would not do in her performance. Many of the classic moments of the film, came as a

result of Colbert refusing to do what was in the screenplay, “For one intimate scene, he

said: ‘Claudette refused to even partially undress before the camera. She wanted to

feature her acting, not her sex appeal’” (Pace). Her reservations inspired Capra to create

the whole Walls of Jericho concept (IMDb):

By the same token, she refused at first to raise her skirt for the subsequently

famous hitchhiking scene, in which the script called for her to demonstrate that a

display of leg could stop a motorist…. And so, Mr. Capra recalled: “We waited

until the casting director sent us a chorus girl with shapely underpinnings to

‘double’ for Colbert’s. When she saw the double’s leg, she said: ‘Get her out of

here. I’ll do it. That’s not my leg!’” (Pace).

Both gags are now a couple of the most memorable parts of the picture.

Once the production had reached an end, Colbert reportedly claimed that she had

“just finished the worst picture in the world” (Pace). She felt so poorly about the picture

and about her performance that she did not even bother to go to the Academy Awards

ceremony, “when she won for Best Actress, she was found about to leave on a trip and

was rushed to the ceremony, where she made her acceptance speech in a traveling suit”

(IMDb). This little picture had surprised not only the critics, but also the people involved

in its production. Colbert’s volatility gives an indication that even people involved in

comedy had a difficult time assessing it.

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Production

The comic and narrative style of It Happened One Night has its origins in

Shakespeare, Shaw, and Wilde (Mizejewski 18-40). The original idea came from a short

story called “Night Bus” and apparently, “No one in his crew at Columbia had much faith

that the story would make a very good film, and Capra had to convince everyone,

including Columbia chief Harry Cohn, to let him do the film” (Weems). Production went

very quickly and smoothly:

Director Frank Capra often said that the making of It Happened One Night would

have made a pretty good screwball comedy in itself. Consider the elements: two

irascible studio bosses, an impossibly fast schedule, a couple of spoiled stars who

didn’t want to make the picture and are hostile to the harried director—yet

somehow they manage to produce an enduring classic (Landazuri).

From the start, the filmmakers had anticipated difficulty with the Production Code due to

the innuendo and implied sexuality in the film. Film content standards were under heated

debate at the time. In 1933, when the National Legion of Decency began, the Hays

Office became the Production Code Administration, headed by Joseph Breen. Capra’s

film not only had to pass inspection from these organizations, but from the internal studio

censors as well. The federal government at the time had even considered taking charge

of censoring films (Mizejewsi 46). Much to Capra’s relief, the film managed to squeeze

by the censors. It was:

made exactly at the moment when social pressures were mounting toward stricter

film censorship in the early 1930s…. it was released in January 1934, four months

before more rigorous Code enforcements were implemented… the handling of

sexual innuendo and desire in It Happened One Night became a template for ways

in which sex could be handled during the Code era, which stretched over the next

several decades (Mizejewsi 42).

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Though many see the Production Code as a hindrance, it forced Capra and his

contemporaries to become more innovative and resourceful in their telling of a narrative.

The Film

Class is very much the sometimes-disguised subject of It Happened One Night.

The first shot (1) opens on a yacht, shifting inside it to a rich young woman who refuses

to eat, even when millions suffering through the Depression struggle to afford food. As

we see in the comedies of Shakespeare, the woman rebels against the wishes of her

father. The entire narrative involves running away—but not from any real danger, simply

because of a disagreement with her father. Her father goes to extremes to find her,

including air reconnaissance, offering a reward, and retrieving her with an entire

entourage of police even though he and the viewer are fairly certain that she would return

on her own in a few weeks anyway. Feminist Scholar Maria DiBattista explains that,

traditionally, the woman’s power lies in choice of marriage (20), and that “This power

may be wielded in sheer fun and high spirits, as in the madcap heiress comedies like It

Happened One Night” (23). Throughout the trials that Ellie endures, there is always a

feeling of lightness to her dilemmas.

Ellie’s upbringing is clear when she does not understand the etiquette of riding on

a bus, staying in a hotel, or hitchhiking. She has difficulty surviving on a budget or even

eating food that is not specially prepared for her. She feels that her money could get her

anywhere, and is quite confident—that is until her suitcase is stolen (10). While Ellie

may have the best of intentions, she does not understand the concept of limited funds.

She gives a boy on the bus all of Peter’s money, not considering the consequences that it

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means for them (46). Opposite to Chaplin’s Tramp as an outsider, Ellie is the wealthy

outsider in a low to middle class world.

On the other end of the class spectrum is Peter Warne, who prides himself on his

world experience—from knowing the best way to dunk donuts (36) to knowing the right

way to hitchhike (59)—no matter what, he has enough knowledge of the subject to write

a book, or so he claims. Warne tries to appear apathetic to everyone else around him by

openly insulting his boss, by trying to act tough in front of his peers, and by pretending

not to care if Ellie appreciates what he does for her or not. It is not through his words,

but through his actions that his true, caring nature appears. The contrasting qualities of

Ellie and Peter’s personalities—her near-helplessness and his stubbornness—make the

romance work. She cannot get to New York without his help, and his determination

makes it so that they will get to New York no matter what. Warne needs a story, and she

will be his story as long as he can keep her around.

Capra utilizes one of the oldest theater devices when, bathed in moonlight,

Colbert and Gable are at their most vulnerable and most romantic (56 and 1:13):

The filmic apotheosis of moonlight occurs in It Happened One Night when Peter

Warne (Clark Gable) provokes Ellie Andrews’ (Claudette Colbert) declaration of

love by describing an island paradise where “you and the moon and the water all

become one.” In this film, the moon is an obstacle to concealment, and so its glow

must be occluded, its light banished (DiBattista 292).

As with nearly every Capra picture, “the pure, innocent allegory…. dances charmingly

along the fence between lark and allegory” (Morrow). The film also includes the

tempting insinuation that crime can be fun and exciting, when Peter tries to convince

fellow bus passenger Shapeley that he is part of a kidnapping ring. DiBattista claims that

comedies “impersonate gangster culture when they can’t round up actual gangsters” (52).

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Crime is a theme in many later comedy films, including Capra’s own Arsenic and Old

Lace (1944), Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks 1938), His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940),

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges 1941), Sullivan’s Travels (Sturges 1942), The Thin Man

series, the Ealing comedies, Some Like It Hot (Wilder 1959), and The Pink Panther series

of Blake Edwards. The crime subgenre is one of the many subgenres of non-comic films

from which comedy borrows, or rather mocks, conventions—consider the gangster

references in these comedies as foils to the dramatic pictures Public Enemy (William A.

Wellman 1931), Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy 1931), and Scarface (Howard Hawks

1932), to name a few.

Reception

It Happened One Night has been described as “a sleeper hit” (Mizejewski 1).

Commercially, it had a rather soft opening, but gained publicity as more and more people

saw it and spread the word (Landazuri). Eventually, it “broke the house records at Radio

City Music Hall in February, 1934. Overall, the film brought in over $1 million [$17

million today] in rental fees for Columbia in its initial release. The total production cost

on the film was $325,000 [$6 million today]” (Weems). No one—not even Capra—

could have predicted this success.

The reviews were overwhelmingly positive. With these reviews, we begin to see

the development of the critical language used to analyze romantic comedies. Mordaunt

Hall of the New York Times called it a “merry romance” and praised the performances of

Colbert and Gable, as well as the fast pace of the writing. Boxoffice Magazine called it

“hilarious”, praising Gable’s performance and noting the “Capra technique”, that is, his

ability to get at the basic human nature inherent in every situation. The New Republic

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said, “Considering its subject, it is better than it has any right to be - better acted, better

directed, better written…. The cast was particularly sound from top to bottom”. Variety

said that it “proves two things. A clean story can be funnier than a dirty one and the best

way to do a bus story is to make them get out and walk”. William Troy of The Nation

stated, “Among the more gratifying phenomena of the current season has been the

growing recognition of It Happened One Night… as one of the few potential classics of

the recent cinema”. From these reviews we see distinct foci: the romance, the

performers, the director, and the writing—indicating how the Screwball comedies

became more of a collaborative effort than earlier comedies.

By the time awards season came around, the film was nominated for five

Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing (Adaptation), Best Actor,

and Best Actress—winning all five (Pace). It “stunned everyone when it won them all….

a feat that would not be repeated for another 40 years, until One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest (1975)” (Landazuri). It Happened One Night was “The first Academy Award Best

Picture nominee to win both Best Actor and Best Actress” (IMDb), as well as “the first

film to win both the Academy Award and National Board of Review Award for the Best

Picture” (IMDb). It is credited with “virtually single-handedly [lifting] Columbia out of

the ranks of poverty row” (IMDb), making it a valid studio in the eyes of industry

executives.

Over 75 years later, the reviews are still mostly positive. Interestingly, most

reviewers still focus on the same aspects of the film as the contemporary reviewers, while

some approach the film in the context of an early Capra success. Martha P. Nochimson

of Senses of Cinema called it “Capra’s best film”. Bret McCabe of the Baltimore City

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Paper praised the performances, saying it “catches icons Gable and Colbert early enough

in their careers where they let themselves be silly”. Still more reviewers praise the

writing. Sukhdev Sandhu of The Telegraph stated, “it’s still witty and sophisticated

today”. David Jenkins of TimeOut London Magazine said, “Every line of dialogue is

calculated bliss”. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described it as “buoyant and elegant

as bubbles in a glass of champagne”. A couple reviewers addressed the social taboo that

the film violated at the time. Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews admitted

that “In many ways it’s dated, but the comedy still works even if it’s probably not as

madcap humorous as when it was first released” and Neil Smith of Total Film Magazine

agreed “Tame by today’s standards,” but adding, “it’s worth remembering just how

shocking a glimpse of Colbert’s car-halting stocking would have been in Depression-era

America”. Tim Dirks of American Movie Classics Filmsite seems to be the only one to

explore the deeper meaning in the film, “The escapist theme of the film, appropriate

during the Depression Era”. He also describes it as “a reversal of the Cinderella story”.

Derek M. Germano of the Cinema Laser summarized the film’s critical success:

It Happened One Night took home the awards that really matter. In my opinion, It

Happened One Night is one of the most significant Academy Award winning

films because it is a comedy. In later years, the Academy came to look upon

comedies with distain, which is completely unfair since making people laugh is a

genuine art form. After all, dying is easy... comedy is hard....

He reminds the reader of the critical bias against comedy.

Legacy

Capra made It Happened One Night, but It Happened One Night made Capra the

standout director that we remember today. He went on to make many successful films,

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comedies and dramas alike. Outside of the motion picture industry, the film inspired

many cultural trends as well. In the hotel scene when Gable undresses, he found it too

difficult to remove an undershirt while delivering all his snappy lines. His solution was

to therefore not wear an undershirt. Consequently, undershirt sales in the United States

dropped considerably (snopes.com). The importance of the bus trip in the film sparked

“interest in bus travel nationwide” (Greyhound). Fritz Freleng, creator of many of the

Looney Tunes characters, credits It Happened One Night with inspiring several well-

known cartoon characters:

it contains at least three things upon which the character “Bugs Bunny” was

based: - The character Oscar Shapely’s (Roscoe Karns) personality - The manner

in which Peter Warne (Clark Gable) was eating carrots and talking quickly at the

same time - An imaginary character mentioned once to frighten Oscar Shapely

named “Bugs Dooley.” Other mentions of “Looney Tunes” characters from the

film include Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly) and King Westley (Jameson

Thomas) being the inspirations for Yosemite Sam and Pepé LePew, respectively

(IMDb).

Two musical versions of the film appeared, “Eve Knew Her Apples (1945) starring Ann

Miller, and You Can’t Run Away From It (1956) with Jack Lemmon and June Allyson”

(Dirks). The Screwball Comedy style of the film went on to inspire such comic gems as

Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday (1940), Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve (1941), The Thin

Man series, and George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story (1940). It Happened One Night

is significant in my study of film comedy not only as a film that has been recognized as

one of the greatest screen comedies for nearly 80 years, but also as the only comedy film

to win the top five Academy Awards as well as the National Board of Review award for

Best Picture—awards for which most comedies were not even nominated.

With It Happened One Night, we see the first case of romantic comedy criticism.

The reviewers focus on the craft of the film, praising the director, performers, writing,

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and the romance. They describe the romance using the terms “sophisticated”, “buoyant”,

and “elegant”, while at the same moment, they describe the comedy as “hilarious”,

“silly”, and “witty”. It is not until the Twenty First Century and almost 70 years since the

film’s release that reviewers begin to address the taboo elements of the film that would

have been quite risqué at the time of its release. As we have already seen with the

previous two films, few reviewers address the deeper themes of the film, and it is not

until decades later—when Tim Dirks in the 2010s describes its escapist elements.

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Case Study #4: Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks 1938)

“Now it isn’t that I don’t like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I’m

strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven’t been any quiet moments”

(Cary Grant, as David Huxley)

Context

Film scholars Maria DiBattista explains how so many of the Screwball Comedies

end in marriage, as if it were a requirement of the subgenre, “Many of the most

enchanting comedies of the thirties—My Man Godfrey, Bringing Up Baby, The Awful

Truth—would have been stillborn ventures or would have ended miserably had the

desirable men in those films not yielded to female sexual pursuit” (331). When modern

critics and scholars analyze Bringing Up Baby, it is impossible for them to consider it

outside of its relation to other Hepburn-Grant films. Since the film, Katharine Hepburn

and Cary Grant went on to make the successful comedies Holiday (George Cukor 1938)

and The Philadelphia Story (Cukor 1940) together. Separately, both actors went on to

many successful roles in comedies as well as in other genres, and are now remembered as

being two of the greatest motion picture performers of the Twentieth Century.

Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks (1896-1977) was one of the most successful filmmakers of the

1930s. Some film scholars have dubbed him an auteur, as film theorist Peter Wollen

explains:

The test case for the auteur theory is provided by the work of Howard Hawks....

Firstly, Hawks is a director who has worked for years within the Hollywood

system.... Secondly, Hawks has worked in almost every genre.... Hawks achieved

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this by reducing the genres to two basic types: the adventure drama and the crazy

comedy (“Comic Mind” 271).

Hawks cited Chaplin as a source of inspiration when it came to his comedies (Mast

“Bringing Up Baby” 258). He was also quick to share his own experiences with comedy:

It’s much easier to get a comedy if you don’t start out trying to be funny. That’s a

particular theory of mine, that if people start a picture and they have a funny main

title, a lot of funny things, it’s as much as to say, “We expect you to laugh.” I

think that’s committing suicide. They’re going to go against it. So I start out and

try to get their attention with a good dramatic sequence and then find a place to

start getting some laughs (Mast “Bringing Up Baby” 259).

Film scholar Rob Nixon lists many traits of Hawks’ style, including “the aggressive

female who destroys a man’s composure, fast-paced action and dialogue and the sparse

use of close-ups” and a preference “to shoot his romantic leads in two-shots that

emphasized a sense of partnership”. Mast comments on Hawks’:

world of men…. Hawks reserves his women for comedies, but even the

delightfully wacky Bringing Up Baby (1938) has a tough, antisentimental core.

Hawks runs Katharine Hepburn through swamps, mud, and thickets in a romantic

chase after her man that has more to do with a tame leopard and a lost dinosaur

bone than with love (“Bringing Up Baby” 304).

As masculine as Hawks’ worldview may be, he is certainly not afraid to make a film in

which the lead is a strong female character.

Katharine Hepburn

At the time of Bringing Up Baby’s development, Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) had

gained some notice in dramatic pictures, but RKO wanted her to branch out into comedy

(Miller). When the film failed financially, the studio blamed her:

The studio suits knew Hepburn had a considerable personal fortune and no

tolerance for people who undermined her position so they offered her an

ultimatum once Bringing Up Baby began to go over budget. She had the option to

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take a part in an undesirable film—Mother Carey’s Chickens (1938) or buy out

her contract. To no one’s surprise, she chose the latter (Nixon).

Hepburn was quite athletic, and Hawks’ film allowed her “to show her gift for physical

comedy by juggling olives, playing ‘squat tag,’ marching to her own offbeat drummer on

the side of a hill, losing her footing on a ridge and her balance crossing a ‘shallow’

stream, swinging on a jailhouse door, even wrestling with a leopard” (DiBattista 211).

Her physicality set her apart from the other female leads of the time, who could impress

only on a verbal level, to which she could add a physical level.

Cary Grant

Like Clark Gable at the time of making It Happened One Night, Cary Grant

(1904-1986) was not yet the megastar that he would become later in his career. He had

already appeared in the successful The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937) with Irene

Dunne, but after Bringing Up Baby he appeared in a string of successful comedies, to

only later branch out into other genres in the 1950s and 60s. Eventually, he became the

ideal American man, as DiBattista describes, “the most hypercivilized male in classic

American film comedy. If any man ever sported the manners of perfect freedom, it is the

debonair Grant” (219). However, Grant was not Hawks’ first choice for the role of David

Huxley:

The male lead was turned down by Leslie Howard, Fredric March, Robert

Montgomery, Ronald Colman and Ray Milland before Hawks turned to Cary

Grant, who had previously worked with Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Grant

didn’t want to do the film either, claiming that he didn’t understand the character.

Hawks said, “You’ve seen Harold Lloyd, haven’t you?” and counseled the actor

to play the role in the manner of the noted silent screen clown as a total innocent

caught up in insane events. He even had Grant wear horn-rimmed glasses like

Lloyd’s (Miller).

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For Grant, glasses indicate intelligence and scholarship, but he is at his most romantic

when the glasses come off. The fact that Gable and Colbert in the case of It Happened

One Night and Grant in the case of this film were not the first choices for their respective

roles reinforces the argument presented in Chapter I: many early sound comedies were

primarily the comedies of filmmakers and not of comic performers. While a silent film

comedy could be built around a specific comic performer, the early Screwball directors

would usually create the story and the characters and then find performers to fill the roles

as the director envisioned them.

Production

The original story of the film came from a short story of the same name written by

Hagar Wilde (Miller), who later collaborated on the screenplay with Dudley Nichols.

Hawks described the casting as “Katie Hepburn and Cary were a great combination. It’s

pretty hard to think of anybody but Cary Grant in that type of stuff. He was so far the best

that there isn’t anybody to be compared to him…. He and Hepburn were just great

together” (Mast “Bringing Up Baby” 260). As this was her first real comedy, Hepburn

had a hard time getting the comic timing down at first. As a remedy, Hawks hired well-

known stage and film comic Walter Catlett, to coach Hepburn in the ways of comedy,

“And from that time on, she knew how to play comedy better, which is just to read lines”

(Mast “Bringing Up Baby” 261):

After a bad start, Hawks grew to respect Hepburn tremendously for her comic

timing, ad-libbing skills and physical control. He would tell the press, “She has an

amazing body—like a boxer. It’s hard for her to make a wrong turn. She’s always

in perfect balance. She has that beautiful coordination that allows you to stop and

make a turn and never fall off balance. This gives her an amazing sense of timing.

I’ve never seen a girl that had that odd rhythm and control” (Miller).

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The reader may recognize Walter Catlett’s name, since he plays Slocum, the constable in

the film.

All of the people involved in the production described it as a joyful experience,

“On some days, Hawks cancelled shooting and took the cast to the races. When he was

particularly pleased with one scene, he brought the cast two cases of champagne….

Hepburn and Grant frequently socialized off the set” (Miller). Besides the stellar human

cast, the film also included two animal performers. The same terrier, Skippy, who

performed as Asta in The Thin Man series and as Mr. Smith in The Awful Truth, was

featured in Bringing Up Baby as George, who seems to control much of the action at

parts of the narrative (Miller). A trained leopard named Nissa appeared as both Baby and

the circus leopard. Hepburn reportedly worked very well with the leopard (Miller). Even

so, the production crew did not want to take any chances with a potentially dangerous

animal. As a result, the film contains quite a lot of optical effects (Miller):

Most of the split screens had a lot of movement in them, which meant the dividing

line had to be moved around as well. Even the scenes of Susan dragging the mean

Leopard on a leash are split screened. You can see that the rope does not line up.

A puppet Leopard was also used in some shots. It’s most clearly seen in the shot

after Susan gets the Leopard dragged into the jail. The reaction shot immediately

afterwards, shows David and Mrs. Random with “Baby” the Leopard on the table.

The Leopard is a puppet (IMDb).

At some points during the picture, the animal performers steal the show from the human

ones.

Hawks “encouraged Grant and Hepburn to pop in whatever wisecracks that might

fit” (Mast “Bringing Up Baby” 9) and several of the more memorable gags are

improvisations or come from the performers’ own inspiration. The bit when Grant

accidently rips off the back of Hepburn’s dress and then tries to cover it up came from a

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similar real life experience of Grant’s (Miller). The final stunt with the collapsing

Brontosaurus skeleton worked because of “Grant’s circus background…. He drilled

[Hepburn] on exactly when to let go of the ladder and how to grab his wrist to make sure

neither would be hurt” (Miller). Hepburn improvised the line “I was born on the side of a

hill,” when the heel of her shoe actually broke (Miller). When Hepburn refers to Grant as

“Jerry the Nipper”, it is homage to The Awful Truth in which Irene Dunne refers to Grant

with the same nickname (Miller). One of the most historically significant improvisations

came from Grant, when in the woman’s bathrobe he proclaims that he just turned “gay all

of a sudden”. This line was the first time the word “gay” had been used in mainstream

media to refer to homosexuality and not happiness (Sinfield 110). It was also the only

time “during the reign of the Code” (Russo 47) that the word appeared in this context,

mostly because it was not in the original screenplay.

During postproduction, “Hawks frequently patched shots together that did not

quite match or whose dialogue did not connect. Overlapping dialogue, from both on- and

off-frame, eased the connection and erased any sense of discontinuity in either the film’s

action or editing” (Miller). One cannot imagine the film without these qualities now; it is

interesting that this was originally done to cover up what Hawks saw as flaws. Outside

of the opening titles, “There is no musical score for the film” (IMDb). This lack of

nondiegetic music makes it that much more significant when Grant and Hepburn sing “I

Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” to calm Baby.

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The Film

Of all the Screwball Comedies, Bringing Up Baby has to be the screwiest. The

greatest appeal of Bringing Up Baby is the performances of Grant and Hepburn. We first

meet David Huxley involved in what is the center of his life—his profession. Hawks

uses the classic film trick of a closeup of the sign to show that it is a museum (1). In the

first scene, we also meet David’s dull, unemotional fiancée, Miss Swallow (3), her

dryness signaling that she is not the right woman for David.

Susan Vance is introduced to both David and the viewer not a moment too soon

(4). She is the exact opposite of Miss Swallow—Susan is the epitome of the female

trickster of Shakespeare and Austen. As a comic figure, Susan has no regard for social

faux pas, perhaps because she is already of the upper class, and therefore does not need to

impress anyone in order to gain wealth or reputation. Susan has neither an apparent

occupation nor obligations. She says and does what comes to her mind without

considering the consequences and she is a source of disruption in David’s life. .

Nearly every character in the film is upper class. Susan’s aunt is the

stereotypical wealthy widow, who even has a financial advisor to help make decisions

about her money—and more than one man wants her money. The lower class characters

all fill stereotypes. The Irish groundskeeper (55) is always intoxicated—to the point that

he claims that everyone tells him to stop drinking, and he is not surprised when he thinks

he is imagining the leopard. The Sheriff is a typical, ignorant, bumpkin stereotype. He

gets confused and deceived quite easily (1:22).

So much of the comic situations follow the Principle of Comic Timing and

depend on coincidence. Of course Susan and David keep running into each other—the

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viewer would not expect it any other way. The narrative brings David and Susan together

through coincidences that work so perfectly that the viewer can only see it as fate. Of

course David’s golf ball rolls to her area of the course, of course she gets in his car

mistakenly (7), of course he slips on her olive (10), and of course the museum’s

wealthiest potential donor is Susan’s Aunt (18). The viewer not only expects them to

meet, but also looks forward to it.

The Principles of Comic Experience and Comic Sense work together to bring us

the classic comic elements of deception and impersonation that are rampant in the film.

The deception goes to such extremes that not even David and Susan can keep up with it.

David does not even realize that his fictitious aliases are Mr. Bone (51) and Jerry The

Nipper (1:23), a lack of understanding that leads to some amusing confusion.

The film not only focuses on the romantic relationship between Susan and David,

but their relationships with the animals in their lives. From the start, Susan treats Baby

like a pet, and she treats David in much the same way (25): “Man is woman’s ‘prey’....

there is a clear identification between women and the animal world, most explicit in

Bringing Up Baby” (Mast “Comic Mind” 274). Eventually, David behaves like a pet—he

imitates George as he digs in the garden (46). As the animals meet and warm up to each

other, so too do our protagonists (1:07):

Against all the teachings of our science, we are entertained with the wondrous

possibility that a leopard might find much to like—besides his supper—in a dog.

The sight of Baby and George interrupts David and Susan’s wild chase like a

divine vision of a paradise momentarily regained, in which, if the lion would lie

down with lamb, so the leopard with the terrier (DiBattista 197).

In the end, we learn that the animals are smarter than the people. Susan and David think

themselves clever for deceiving everyone—except for when two leopards are present and

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confuse everyone (1:36). DiBattista describes Bringing Up Baby as a Darwinian comedy,

meaning that it ultimately goes down to sexual selection and mating rituals, and she

offers a valid point when she says:

No one to my knowledge has openly wondered why David, who has no profession

in Hagar Wilde’s story on which the film is based, should be given the character

(such as Hollywood understands it to be) of a paleontologist. Nor has much

thought been given to how the entire menagerie of human and animal types

presented in the film relates to that monitory skeleton of the brontosaurus who

visually dominates the film’s beginning and its end (176).

Concurrently, the neck of the Brontosaurus skeleton and its missing bone serve both as

phallic symbols and a reminder of an animal that failed to attain Darwin’s survival of the

fittest. Regarding Susan, DiBattista explains:

We thus cannot fully appreciate, much less endorse, Susan Vance’s license as a

fast-talking dame who says and acts on any zany idea that pops into her head

(many of them of questionable legality) unless we understand her comic and

social role as a Mendelian renegade. Her surname immediately alerts us to her

vanguard status, encouraging us to regard her not as a prime specimen of her class

but as a singular human type. Indeed, as played by Katharine Hepburn, Susan

Vance is a particularly fine (and refined) if madcap incarnation of the “Hawksian

woman.” The Hawksian woman was a female type first identified by Naomi

Wise. As Wise described and commended her, the Hawksian woman was a

radical screen presence who existed apart or beyond the more stolid conventions

of movie womanhood (180).

Just like in It Happened One Night, moonlight reveals a moment of truth (1:09). As

David and Susan get emotionally closer, their physical proximity seems to get closer as

well (1:16).

Reception

By the time of its release, the film had gone well over budget, something that the

studio executives at RKO had been warning Hawks about all along (Mast “Bringing Up

Baby” 14), and upon its release, the film was a commercial failure, “because it went over

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budget [$1,200,000] and grossed only $715,000 in the U.S. and another $394,000 in the

rapidly declining overseas market” (Miller). Beyond the approaching war, Sherrod

explains the reason for the poor reception, “Despite a delightfully absurd plot, the

characters in Bringing Up Baby were intellectuals and the dialogue was considered too

fanciful for mainstream audiences at the time” (Sherrod), most of which would have been

working class looking to comedy as a form of escapism. The film eventually did make a

small profit, but not enough to satisfy the studio.

While the reviews were mixed, the critical reaction was not as negative as many

scholars would lead one to believe. Norbert Lusk of the Los Angeles Times hated the

film, stating that it was the wrong type of film for Hepburn and that:

Dissatisfaction and displeasure are voiced by patrons, many of whom are

susceptible only to entertainment and are without critical bias. The consensus of

audience opinion is that the picture is too outrageous a parody on good taste and

common sense. It may clean up in neighborhood houses.

Film Weekly found the film to be passable, but criticized it, “The opening is a little off-

key and several comic sequences have only the elementary appeal of slapstick”. Those

were the only negative contemporary reviews that I was able to find. Note how both use

comic terms, particularly “outrageous”, “slapstick”, and “parody”. Also notice how the

reviewer for film weekly finds physical comedy, “slapstick” in particular, to be only

“elementary”. Unlike these two reviewers, reviewers from four major publications gave

the film positive reviews. Another reviewer for The Los Angeles Times incorrectly

predicted, “in the end Bringing Up Baby will probably be a decisive hit”. Mae Tinee of

the Chicago Daily Tribune said, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a real feature

length slapstick comedy. As a quite amusing specimen of this class, I welcome Bringing

Up Baby”. Variety praised the performances of Hepburn and Grant and called it “definite

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box office”. We see critics praising the inclusion of slapstick as they did with Duck Soup

(1933), and the performers as they did with It Happened One Night (1934).

After the success of later Hepburn-Grant projects like Holiday (1938) and The

Philadelphia Story (1940), Bringing Up Baby found a renewed interest among film

reviewers and audiences. In the 1980s, philosopher Stanley Cavell brought new scholarly

attention to the film, “Bringing Up Baby straddles originality and formula as blithely,

cheerfully, and rewardingly as any Hollywood studio film ever did. It is truly

extraordinary” (Mast “Bringing Up Baby” 3), describing the decision that every artist

makes to follow formula or to depart from it that I have already mentioned. Most recent

reviews praise the rapid pace of the film. In 1997, Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible

Celluloid said, “It’s a brilliant movie, and one of the greatest and most intense ever

made”—using the term “intense” to describe the film’s use of the Principle of Comic

Logic. Diane Wild of DVD Verdict described the Screwball Comedy’s collaborative

nature, calling it “Magic…a sublime convergence of greatness”. Jon Danzinger of

Digitally Obsessed added, “It really is one of the all-time great screen comedies, and in

almost seventy years it’s lost none of its fun, charm, wit or spirit”, speaking of its

longevity. Joshua Rothkopf of Timeout New York Magazine agreed with Danzinger,

saying, “A comedy that never should have worked is now all but immortal”.

Legacy

The low profits from the film resulted in RKO ‘punishing’ both Hawks and

Hepburn, “This movie did so badly at the box office that Howard Hawks was fired from

his next production at RKO and Katharine Hepburn was forced to buy out her contract”

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(TCM). Hawks himself remarked that, “I think the picture had a great fault and I learned

an awful lot from it. There were no normal people in it. Everyone you met was a

screwball” (Henderson 12-13), supporting the statement in Chapter I that every comedy

needs a straightman—a foil for the comic characters. Because of this film and other

failures from around the same era, Hepburn became known as “box-office poison”

(Miller), a title that she would not lose until later success with Holiday (1938) and The

Philadelphia Story (1940).

In subsequent decades, Bringing Up Baby inspired dozens of television series and

motion pictures, most notably Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972).

Bogdanovich had several interviews with Hawks before and after making his film, and

credited Bringing Up Baby for giving him the idea for What’s Up, Doc?. Hawks himself

called his own Man’s Favorite Sport (1964) a remake of Bringing Up Baby (Miller):

Like Casablanca (1942), Bringing Up Baby is a film that became a classic thanks

to television airings starting in the ‘50s and revival screenings during the height of

repertory cinema in the ‘60s. It is now regarded as one of the greatest comedies of

Hollywood’s golden age and has influenced the work of such contemporary

directors as Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme and the Coen Brothers (Nixon).

The rapid, zany style of Bringing Up Baby influenced later Screwball comedies,

including Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra 1944) and The Odd Couple (Gene Saks

1968). In 2006, Premiere Magazine named it one of The 50 Greatest Comedies of All

Time and Entertainment Weekly named it the 24

th

Greatest Film Of All Time (IMDb).

The genre of comedy and the subgenre of the Screwball Comedy would not be the same

without Bringing Up Baby. Like It Happened One Night, it is a treat to witness two of

the last century’s most acclaimed performers lose all inhibition and act goofy. Notice,

from It Happened One Night to this film, how reviewers look for chemistry between the

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romantic leads—revealing a critical convention in the analyses of romantic comedies that

first appears in the critical language of the mid-1930s. The critics describe the Screwball

comedy of the film as “outrageous”, “parody”, “slapstick”, “brilliant”, “intense”, “fun”,

“charm”, “wit”, “spirit”, and “magic”. They also praise the way it combines the verbal

banter with slapstick, much as they did for Duck Soup. It is with this comic synergy and

carefree spirit of its characters that the film succeeds.

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Case Study #5 Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges 1942)

“I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The

problems that confront the average man…. With a little sex in it”

(Joel McCrea, as John L. Sullivan)

Context

At the time of Sullivan’s Travels, many filmmakers had dabbled in making

socially conscious films. Known collectively as The Popular Front, most of these

filmmakers focused on the serious nature of social issues. Two notable examples of

Popular Front works are James Agee and Walker Evan’s book, Let Us Now Praise

Famous Men and Jean Renoir’s film, Rules of the Game (1939) (Moran 107). The

author’s name seen on the airplane in the final scene, “Sinclair Beckstein” is “an

amalgamation of the names of authors Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and John

Steinbeck” (TCM), three contemporary Popular Front authors.

Sullivan’s Travels is ironic. In it, Sturges criticizes the methods and motivations

of the Popular Front, yet at the same time, he somehow seems to make a social critique in

the style of the Popular Front , “Self-reflexive from beginning to end, Sullivan’s Travels

is a film about the effort of a director of escapist comedies to make a Popular Front film”

(Moran 106). At the time of its release at the end of the Great Depression and the start of

World War II, the film was almost dated:

By the time Sullivan’s Travels was released in January 1942, the Depression was

over, the United States was at war, and the 1930s had come to an end. The hobo

jungle and prison farm that take over Sturges’ movie marks it as the last 1930s

social protest film. But Sullivan’s Travels is more usually understood as the last

successful screwball comedy, an affirmation of 1930s Hollywood’s most

distinctive genre (Moran 111).

Unlike many social protest films, Sturges did not need to exaggerate the current situation:

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The word hobo is of obscure origin. It is first sighted around 1890, when it meant

an out-of-work man on the move in search of any sort of odd job. The first wave

of hoboes appeared after the Civil War, when jobless veterans were dumped on a

country and an economy at whose center was the railroad. The second wave was

after World War I, again mostly veterans, faced with depression and Dust Bowl

(Carnes 217).

Again remember how easily the genre of comedy can approach sensitive social issues,

poverty and homelessness included.

Another of Sturges’ significant statements in the film involves race, as the only

real sympathetic characters are members of the all Black congregation:

The Negro spiritual was the one safe form in 1930s film in which black

Americans could be depicted in a noncomic, nondenigrading mode. Sturges goes

much further... the film allows the black preacher to condescend to whites by

labeling prisoners who have fallen off the social ladder as “equal in the sight of

God”… No wonder the NAACP praised the films (Moran 124).

The inclusion of these sympathetic Black characters marked one of the few and earliest

occasions that Black characters existed in a comedy film for a purpose other than being

the butt of a joke.

Preston Sturges

Like Chaplin before him, scholars have called Sturges (1898-1959) an auteur

(Moran 114). He began his film career as a writer, later transitioning to the role of

director. Because of his screenwriting background, his films contain a great deal of

“verbal wit”, which he combines “with great visual slapstick and… a sharp sense of

editing and narrative construction” (Steffen). One of the director’s trademarks is that his

films frequently feature “moneyless heroines” (DiBattista 126), as exemplified by

Veronica Lake’s character in Sullivan’s Travels. Within recent years, more critical

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attention has returned to Sturges’ works, which had been mostly overlooked for decades.

For Sullivan’s Travels:

Sturges is aided greatly by the work of cinematographer John Seitz, one of

Hollywood’s finest cameramen of the day…. remembered for films with noirish

elements such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard

(1950)….he displays his talent for shooting both types of films, as suggested by

the contrast between the bright world of Hollywood and the low-key, chiaroscuro

lighting of the chain gang sequences (Steffen).

This film features some of the best cinematography of the Screwball Comedy subgenre.

Production

Sturges was first inspired to write the story for Sullivan’s Travels after reading the

stories of actor John Garfield who shared his experiences “living the life of a hobo, riding

freight trains and hitchhiking his way cross-country for a short period in the 1930s”.

(IMDb). From the start, Sturges wanted Joel McCrea to star in his film, but as was the

case with the other two Screwballs of the 1930s that I have already profiled in this study,

Veronica Lake was not Sturges’ first choice for the female lead. He had originally

wanted Barbara Stanwyck with whom he had worked on The Lady Eve the previous year

(Steffen). He chose Lake when he discovered her in another film:

Sturges wanted Lake for the part of the waiflike actress after seeing her in

Paramount’s I Wanted Wings (1941), about three air force recruits. What Lake

didn’t tell Sturges at first was that she would be six months pregnant when

shooting began. Lake’s condition forced Sturges to rewrite some scenes, and he

ordered costume designer Edith Head to create for Lake gowns and a floppy hobo

costume that wouldn’t show her condition (Carnes 217).

Many critics now feel that Lake’s performance in Sullivan’s Travels is her “best

performance and one of the few instances where she was able to overcome the burden of

her glamorous image” (Steffen). Notice that Sturges chose to hire an actress that was not

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recognized by audiences as a comic performer—adding to the ambiguity that audiences

felt when the film premiered and they could not understand if it was a comedy or a

tragedy.

Before its release, the threat of censorship appeared, not because of innuendo as

in most other pictures, but because “the US Office of Censorship [was] concerned that

the film might be used as propaganda by the enemy during World War II” (Steffen). The

Office “asked Paramount to cut some of the harsher scenes; the studio refused, and as a

result the film was not allowed to be exported during the war” (Steffen). This decision,

of course, eliminated any international audience that the film might have gained, but it is

difficult to say how well such a distinctly American film could have done in the

international market.

The Film

With its title’s reference to Jonathan Swift’s famous satire, Sullivan’s Travels is

very much Sullivan’s film, as it presents exactly what the character sets out to discover.

It presents a blend of comedy, pathos, and inspiration that together reinforce and

paradoxically undermine the filmmaker’s argument. The film contains several exquisite

visual gags, such as the chase scene with the trailer following Sullivan over fields and dirt

roads (13), the changing expressions of the portrait in the widow’s house (21), and

several characters falling into the pool (36)—a gag which channels the drowning gag in

City Lights (1931). The verbal humor appears in most of the encounters with Sullivan’s

associates (12) and with the Girl’s dry, sarcastic comments.

Much of the film focuses on Sullivan and the Girl’s development as a couple.

The opening title features a picture of them together (0) and the stars’ names together.

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Sullivan even explains her presence to the police, “There’s always a girl in the picture”

(31). Their relationship begins with the Girl in the dominant position, as she pays for his

food (25), though he begins by deceiving her. Once again, the strong female character is

in control of the situation in a comedy. The two share a common motif in that no matter

how Sullivan tries to get away he “always ends up back in Hollywood” (32) and she

always ends up “back where [she] started” (34). The Girl not only provides support for

Sullivan on his expedition, but also acts as a counterbalance when he becomes too

profound (50). We gradually see them get closer both literally and emotionally until it

culminates in a shot of the Girl and Sullivan walking along the lake while holding hands

(56).

Film scholar Gerald Mast credits the opening scene with setting the mood for the

entire picture, “The comic dialogue of this opening scene is essential to the effect of the

rest of the film, which gets precariously close to the edge of bathos in its later sequences”

(“Comic Mind” 10). Much like the opening to City Lights (1931), the viewer understands

it as a comedy from the start. Scholars Kathleen Moran and Michael Rogin claim that

Sullivan’s Travels “Parodies the road movie like It Happened One Night” (118), but

unlike the earlier film, Sullivan cannot seem to ever go anywhere but back to Hollywood.

The film is not afraid to acknowledge the Great Depression. From Sullivan’s first

discussion with the studio heads through the rest of the film, we see a real conflict

between his wish to bring attention to the suffering around him and their wish to distract

audiences by making escapist pictures (2-7). Only in the end does Sullivan realize that

perhaps the studio heads may have the right idea (1:29).

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Like City Lights (1931) before it, Sullivan’s Travels juxtaposes lower and upper

class characters and conventions so well. In a film so centered on class difference, it is

clear from the start (6) that Sullivan really has no clue about poverty, to the point that his

butler makes a great statement: the definition of poverty comes from people who are not

poor (9). Sullivan’s naivety is apparent when he can barely jump onto the train (39) and

later when he tries to have an intellectual discussion with a couple of tramps aboard the

train (40). A critique of the justice system argues that there is a bias against poor

defendants (1:12). Consider how the Mister at the labor camp and the court Bailiff show

a clear negative attitude toward the underprivileged, as they treat each other civilly yet

treat Sullivan poorly. When we enter the world of the upper class, the Girl’s (and the

viewer’s) introduction to Sullivan’s mansion is a wide shot that contrasts the small

human figures with the large structure (32). The setting is important for characterization,

as the Girl defines wealth and status by whether or not one has a pool (33). One of the

most remarkable transitions in the film that juxtaposes rich and poor so articulately

occurs when the “land yacht” dissolves to a hobo camp (51), moving from one extreme to

another. The labor camp shows us a direct contrast of leisure and labor when the

prisoners dig ditches as the Mister lounges in a boat (1:14).

While the comedy in the film is very fast and very verbal, the pathos comes from

sequences with little to no dialogue. For Sullivan’s third attempt to experience poverty,

an entire seven-minute sequence (51-57) of him and the Girl going to the Salvation Army

(as indicated by the band), showering, eating, listening to a revival, and sleeping, happens

only to music. Most of the sequence is told through long shots and dollies of the crowds

of tramps and closeups on the Girl and Sullivan. Likewise, when the Girl learns that

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Sullivan is still alive (1:26), most of the ensuing action is delivered through the changing

tempos and styles of music.

Unlike many comedies, Sullivan’s Travels is a story of change. He begins by

impersonating a hobo, but eventually becomes trapped in the lower class world that he

was trying to discover, “Sullivan has finally become what he was pretending to be”

(Moran 121). One interesting quality of the film is the presence of Sullivan’s two butlers.

Though not quite upper class themselves, they certainly do not understand how the lower

classes function, as is evident by their phone calls to the train depot (37). Historian Mark

C. Carnes describes the prison camp, “When the plot requires that Sullivan end up in a

southern chain gang, he knows what Hell is like” (216). Unlike the ancient heroes in the

Greek and Roman epics who nobly travel to the underworld and back, as a comic hero,

Sullivan does so unwillingly—as a victim.

The film also presents interesting points about race. For the upper class, the

Black chef is obviously there to cater to the needs of the White studio workers and then

acts as the object of comedy when he gets tossed around in the chase scene (15).

However, in several scenes, we see poor Blacks and poor Whites eating, sleeping,

washing, and attending revival meetings together, and the Black prisoners at the labor

camp work with the White prisoners. These scenes argue that disempowerment is more a

matter of class than of race. As I stated above, the most overt statement about race in the

film is the fact that it is the all-Black church that invites the prisoners to their “picture

show” (1:18). The ensuing cartoon results in everyone present, Black and White, rich

and poor, laughing together (1:23)—a sequence arguing that social class is the only real

separator among people, and that comedy can overcome even that. Sturge’s film shows

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clear social consciousness, and his socially unacceptable arguments succeed because of

comedy’s unique ability to explore taboo.

Probably the largest theme of Sullivan’s Travels, and one of reasons why it makes

such a worthwhile addition to this study, is its exploration of the amount of humor found

in everyday life, and of film’s ability to educate. The film opens with a dedication to the

people who make us laugh (1). Sullivan argues that film is a “sociological and artistic

medium” (4) and “the greatest educational medium the world has ever known” (29).

Sullivan’s trip to the cinema with his first employer juxtaposes tragedy with comedy (19).

Clearly, the highlight of the prisoners’ lives at the labor camp is a trip to the “picture

show” (1:15). Sturges shows the magic of cinema as the parishioners rise to dim the

lights and wind up the projector, and the organ begins to play (1:21). Sullivan truly

understands comedy when he laughs (1:23) and realizes what he states at the end of the

film, “there’s a lot to be said for making people laugh… did you know that’s all some

people have? It isn’t much… but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan”

(1:29). Sullivan goes from producer to consumer:

Sully was an involuntary audience member in his earlier genre travels, watching

with the widow a movie we do not see…. now he is happy to be part of it. In this

one painful moment, Sullivan’s Travels finds the Archimedian point it has been

structured to deny. Sturges has closed the gap between film and the world by

invoking our need, as mass audience (Moran 125-6).

The film ends with a fitting montage tribute to laughter.

Reception

Film reviewers all over the United States praised Sturges and his film. Many reviewers

compared his style to many filmmakers from Capra to Welles (Moran 127-8). However,

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the film did not do as well commercially as the studio had hoped, “Due to confusion over

the varying, inconsistent moods within the film, the marketing campaign decided to focus

on Veronica Lake’s peekaboo hairdo instead, with the tagline: “VERONICA LAKE’s

ON THE TAKE” (Dirks). Here we see how the manner in which comedy borrows the

conventions of other genres is not only confusing to reviewers, but to the studio

producing the comedy film as well. Variety liked the film, stating, “Sullivan’s Travels is

one of the screen’s more ‘significant’ films. It is the best social comment made upon

Hollywood since A Star Is Born. And that, we quietly suspect, is exactly what Mr.

Sturges meant it to be”. About Sturges, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, said

“Preston Sturges need make no excuses for the dominance of comedy on the screen, since

he has done more than any one over the last two years to give brightness and bounce and

authority to this general type of fare”. Notice how these critics address its explorations of

the nature of Hollywood and of comedy, yet ignore his explorations of class struggle.

The National Board of Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of 1942.

However, it was not nominated for any Academy Awards (Dirks). I cannot find any

explanation for why the Academy did not recognize the picture, but perhaps its left-

leaning themes and criticism of America were too controversial for a nation at war.

Today, many film historians consider the film Sturges’ greatest achievement.

Although it is a comedy, many say that it is one of the most accurate depictions of the

plight of the homeless during the Great Depression—a fact that contemporary critics

avoided mentioning. Once again, a Screwball Comedy represents a collaborative effort

and the reviewers acknowledge that. As director and writer, Sturges’ talents receive the

most praise. In 2001, Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant said “Preston Sturges at his best is

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nothing short of amazing”, noting its great dialogue as well as Sturges great direction.

Jeff Ulmer of Digitally Obsessed echoed Erickson, when he called Sturges “a genius both

as a director and as a writer”. Todd McCarthy of Criterion remarked on Sturges’ ability

to combine comedy and tragedy, calling the film “both terribly funny and deeply

moving”—a statement reminiscent of reviews of City Lights (1931). Derek M. Germano

of The Cinema Laser compared Sturges to the title character when he said, “Sturges

achieves the goal that he sets up for his fictional director in the film”. Terry Coll of DVD

Verdict added “you can’t dislike Sullivan because he’s so well intentioned, if a little

naïve. He truly wants to make his work meaningful”, much as we can infer Sturges had

wanted. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian added that the film succeeds as “a distillation

of pure happiness”. Like the contemporary reviewers, John J. Puccio of Movie Metropolis

dubbed it “the finest film about filmmaking ever made,” commenting on its accurate

depiction of the Hollywood mindset. Speaking to its longevity and to its exploration of

the value and purpose of comedy, Angie Errigo of Empire Magazine said, “Sullivan’s

Travels is still as brilliant and funny today as it was back in the early ‘40s,” adding “Few

comedies are as smart as this. Anyone with a taste for laughter, even those with the

lowest of brows, should forever find the consolation, vindication and affirmation of

comedy’s merit”. In 2009, Ed Howard of Seul Le Cinema added that the film is “an ode

to comedy, a love letter to Charlie Chaplin and all the other great comic performers who

have graced the screen”. Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid wrote about the

film’s history, “Forgotten for years along with its maker, writer/director Preston Sturges,

Sullivan’s Travels has only recently enjoyed a comeback and induction into classic

status”, adding “It actually describes the same conundrum that’s still going on in real life;

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that comedy doesn’t get the same respect drama does”. No doubt the attentive reader has

encountered this argument before.

I was unable to find any reviews that are wholly negative. The less than favorable

reviews are few and far between, mostly reaching a consensus that the film has a high

quality of presentation, but is not a comedy filled with laugh out loud moments. In 2001,

Tim Purtell of Time Magazine said that it does not “match the sleek perfection of his

Lady Eve”. Dan Harper of Senses of Cinema called the moral lesson of the film

“somewhat transparent” today, although it was not so to a contemporary audience. Sam

Adams of the Philadelphia City Paper called it “a rather forced (and, you can’t help but

feel, self-serving) defense of comedy over drama, often seems too broad to support such a

nuanced conclusion”. Matthew Kennedy of the Bright Lights Film Journal stated that the

film is “not Sturges’ best movie. It lacks the commanding high spirits of The Lady Eve

and The Palm Beach Story”. Chris Barsanti of Filmcritic.com echoed the opinions of

many of the film’s detractors when he stated:

Would it be fair to say that, when all is said and done, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s

Travels is just not as funny as its choir of supporters have made it out to be? It’s

not dour by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s hardly laugh-filled enough to

merit inclusion at #39 on the AFI’s list of 100 Funniest American Films.

He concludes by saying that it is “somewhat of a mystery as to why it has been so

enshrined in the public memory” but then adds, “At the same time, to ask that a

filmmaker like Sturges hit every note perfectly each time out of the gate is asking a bit

much”. Notice how the unfavorable reviews judge the quality of the comedy on the basis

of how many laughs it elicited, in the same way that venue managers would judge quality

Vaudeville acts.

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Legacy

In historian Mark C. Carnes’ book, Past Imperfect, writer Gore Vidal describes

his first experience with Sullivan’s Travels:

The Japanese have already attacked Pearl Harbor. I know that by the time I am

seventeen I shall be in the army. Meanwhile, I sit in the cold gymnasium and

watch Sullivan’s Travels. I don’t much like it. The director/writer, Preston

Sturges, keeps sliding from farce into grim realism—well, stern pathos—and I am

having a hard time keeping up with him (216).

From Vidal’s account, it sounds as though the difficulties of World War II faced by

audiences at the time of the film’s release overshadowed the domestic problems that

Sturges’ film highlights. Vidal describes his experience seeing hoards of homeless in his

life and how well Sturges captured them “For more than half a century their images keep

coming back to me—and always, curiously enough, in black and white—even those

scenes recalled from life” (219). Universal rereleased Sullivan’s Travels in 1983

(Mirisch 364), most likely due to the popularity of reviving classic films at that time. In

2000, Joel and Ethan Coen released a film titled O Brother, Where Art Thou, an homage

to the title of the film that Sullivan had wished to make.

Of the three major themes that Sturges addresses in Sullivan’s Travels, the critics

speak about his exploration of the Hollywood system and of comedy much more so than

his exploration of class. As we see in the critical trend established in the previous case

studies, the reviewers do not acknowledge the social message of the film until decades

later. Reinforcing the sense of the sound film as the medium of comic director and not

comic performer, the critics focus on Sturges and his talents in their reviews and praise

his writing, direction, and the “authority” with which he handles them. As with Chaplin,

they compliment his ability to juxtapose comedy and tragedy—which appears to be

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something that reviewers really appreciate with comedy films. As for describing the

comedy in Sullivan’s Travels, reviewers use the terms “brightness”, “bounce”,

“happiness”, “funny”, “moving”, “brilliant”, “smart”, “spirit”, and “laughter” when

describing it. The terms that they use with negative connotations include “low brow” and

“forced”. As with the other case studies, the narrative/gag balance causes a lot of

difficulty for reviewers. The same critics that complained about a perceived lack of

narrative in City Lights (1931) and Duck Soup (1933), complained that there were not

enough gags in Sullivan’s Travels—sometimes the balance tips the other way.

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Case Study #6: The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick 1955)

“No really good plan involves Mrs. Wilberforce”

(Alec Guinness, as Professor Marcus)

Context

The first five films profiled in this study are all American productions, not

because of any bias against non-American productions, but rather because American

pictures dominated the motion picture market of the English-speaking world for most of

the Twentieth Century. In order to fully understand the ability of British comedies to

succeed globally in the 1950s, one must first understand the situation in the United States

at the time.

Film historian Robert Sklar states that American film comedy of the 1950s, in

particular, “has been generally neglected in critical writing” (328-329). There are four

somewhat interrelated reasons for this situation. First, with the American film industry

during much of the 1950s living in fear of the Communism investigations by Senator

Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, comedy, as the

most subversive of all film genres and the most critical of the status quo, stood the most

to lose. Second, when television became extremely popular in the 1950s, it welcomed

tamer comedians such as Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and Sid

Caesar. Third, as a reaction to the popularity of television, film studios attempted to win

back audiences with big-budget, widescreen epics, featuring grand, dramatic subjects. Of

course, most comedy was not well suited to this sort of exhibition. Film historian David

Cook states:

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The big-budget widescreen comedy was represented by films like How to Marry a

Millionaire (Jean Negulesco 1953), The Long Long Trailer (Vincente Minnelli

1954),…. and A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra 1959). The strong point of film

comedies like these was less verbal or visual wit than excellent production values

(430).

Comedies like these did not do very well with the critics, most likely because critics tried

to compare them to big-budget widescreen dramas. The fourth reason that we do not see

much pure comedy film in the 1950s is because so much of the comedy of the time

appeared in the form of musical comedy. Unlike comedies with musical interludes, like

many of the Marx Brothers’ pictures, the musical numbers in a musical comedy are part

of the action—in fact, they drive the narrative. While the Marx Brothers could perform a

song as a mere aside, the characters in a musical share their thoughts, feelings,

motivations, plans, and reveal plot points through song within the scope of the narrative.

Comic stars such as Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby featured most

of their work in the form of musicals. Even most of the films of Dean Martin and Jerry

Lewis are arguably musical comedies. In the late 1950s, Jerry Lewis began a solo career

and appeared in many non-musical comedies, however, as Cook writes, “Today he is

regarded by the French as a major auteur, but his idiotic comic persona has not found

much favor with American critics” (430). Lewis’ status with English language critics

could be a symptom of the same bias that film reviewers and scholars seem to have

against comedy film in general, but because I have not been able to find a critical

consensus on Lewis, I have decided not to include a case study of one of his films. In his

exploration of 1950s American film comedy, Cook goes on to mark the comedies of Judy

Holliday “Born Yesterday [George Cukor 1950]; The Marrying Kind [George Cukor

1952]; The Solid Gold Cadillac [Richard Quine 1956]” (430) and the late 1950s pictures

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with Rock Hudson and Doris Day, most notably “Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon 1958)”

(431) as significant. These pictures however share more with the genre of romance than

they do with true comedy. As I stated in Chapter II, the greatest American director of

pure comedy film in the 1950s is Billy Wilder, whom I shall profile in the next case

study. With American film focused elsewhere, other English language comedies could

arise.

England’s Ealing Studios, under the direction of Michael Balcon, first excelled in

the field of documentaries before Balcon realized that British comedies could carve their

own niche in the international film market, when he:

assembled a skilled comedy team and began making films that reflected the

changing attitudes of a war-weary public. The combined talents of screenwriters

William Rose, T.E.B. Clarke and John Dighton along with skilled direction of

Robert Hamer, Alexander Mackendrick and Charles Crichton resulted in an

explosion of irreverent black comedies and social satires that would be celebrated

for years to come with worldwide success (Vossler).

The most significant performer at Ealing studios was Alec Guinness (profiled later in this

section), who starred in what are today considered Ealing’s greatest comedies, Kind

Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer 1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton

1951), The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick 1951), and The Ladykillers

(Mackendrick 1955). Although comedy was only “one-fifth of the studio’s product

during this period” (Johns), the comedies were “by far the most successful in the 1950s”

(Landy 10). In her book British Genres, film scholar Marcia Landy adds “comedy was

the only British genre that did consistently well at the box-office” (329). Cook calls the

Ealing comedies “Among the most important British films of the post-war era” (488).

Landy credits the distinct style of British humor to:

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contradictions in the culture…. The pleasure of comedy is thus related to the

subversion of the mechanisms of repression…. The Ealing comedies… at their

best, are carnivalesque. They focus on dominant social institutions—the public

school, the world of commerce and industry, political parties—and turn them on

their head…. The existence of rigid and hierarchical social forms lends itself to a

carnival atmosphere, for there would be no need to turn the world upside down if

it were not so insistently ordered and controlled (333-334).

Today, when film historians write about British film comedies of the 1950s, most likely

they are speaking of the Ealing comedies, which set the tone for later British comedies.

Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness (1914-2000) was one of the Twentieth Century’s most versatile

actors. He began his career on stage and appeared in dozens of plays throughout

England, transitioning to mainstream film in the 1940s, although he never left the theatre.

In 1946, Guinness first worked with director David Lean on Great Expectations, resulting

in a nearly 40 year collaboration with director Lean in such notable films as Oliver Twist

(1948), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor

Zhivago (1965), and A Passage To India (1984). Later in his career, his portrayal of Jedi

Master Obi Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’ Star Wars saga brought him millions of more

fans from younger generations. Guinness brought experience to the cast of Star Wars as

the most respected actor involved in the production at the time. Even with his success in

other genres, Guinness first became “an international star” (Cook 488) because of the

Ealing comedies. Guinness soon became known as a virtual chameleon after “His tour-

de-force performance as all eight members of an aristocratic family in Kind Hearts and

Coronets” (Ansen). Time Magazine described him as “the man of a thousand faces” and

it was his versatility that Guinness himself most enjoyed about acting, saying “One

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hates… to let oneself get into a rut” (Ansen). Throughout his career, Guinness

demonstrated that an actor did not need to specialize in comedy or drama in order to

achieve success—indeed, his comic knack for timing complemented his dramatic sense

of character study.

The Production

Director Alexander Mackendrick (1912-1993) was an unlikely master of British

comedy, as he was American-born (Johns). When writing about Mackendrick, filmmaker

Martin Scorsese says, “he did some of the best work in the middle of what is now

remembered as the Golden Age of British film comedy” (Mackendrick x). He came to

The Ladykillers after directing an earlier Ealing comedy The Man in the White Suit

(1951). According to Michael Balcon, the original idea for The Ladykillers came to

screenwriter William Rose in a dream (Stafford). Like director Mackendrick, Rose—

who captured British humor and sensibilities so eloquently—was an American (Stafford).

The filmmakers assembled a fine cast. From the start, Mackendrick wanted Katie

Johnson for the role of Mrs. Wilberforce, but the studio initially rejected her because they

felt she was too old for the rigors of production. Ironically, Johnson received the role

when the younger actress they had hired passed away before filming began (IMDb). This

film was Johnson’s biggest hit, as well as her penultimate performance (IMDb), for she

passed away a couple years later.

Although critics and scholars today consider the performance of Professor Marcus

as one of his best, Guinness originally felt that Alastair Sim should have received the part

(IMDb). Guinness later admitted that he based his performance on “theatre critic

Kenneth Tynan” (IMDb). Michael Balcon once said that Guinness’ costar, Peter Sellers

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“was much the same… and it is interesting that they greatly admired one another”. Both

men were insecure about their performances, yet they inspired each other (Stafford).

Sellers would later go on to display the same caliber of versatility that Guinness

possessed, although he said “Not that I could hope to be as good as Guinness”. Both

Sellers and costar Herbert Lom are best remembered today for their roles in the hugely

successful Pink Panther series. Because of the popularity of the aforementioned series,

modern audiences find it strange to see Sellers with shifty eyes, a Cockney (instead of

French) accent, and no mustache, and to see Lom attempting to kill someone other than

Sellers. In addition to playing Harry, Sellers also supplied the voices of the parrots

(IMDb). Jeff Stafford of Turner Classic Movies says, “Other cast members who would

go on to greater fame and fortune after The Ladykillers were Kenneth Connor and

Frankie Howard, who appeared in several popular Carry On comedies”.

The Film

The first character that the filmmakers introduce to us is Mrs. Wilberforce, simply

referring to her in the opening titles as “The Old Lady” (1). The first sequence of her

traveling to the police station reveals so much of her character. The viewer’s first sight

of her is in an extremely wide aerial shot, as a tiny figure emerging from a house that

seems to be so out of place surrounded by train tracks. We can tell that her visit to the

police station is a common occurrence, as they humor her (3). At the same time, we learn

of her sense of duty, which becomes so important later in the film, as she felt it was

necessary to explain that her friend’s report of a flying saucer was simply a

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misunderstanding. At the end of the sequence, we first see the gag of her always leaving

her umbrella (4)—a running gag that demonstrates the Principle of Comic Logic.

Our first glimpse of Professor Marcus is a shadow that appears over Mrs.

Wilberforce in the shop window (4), through her window (5), and finally at her front door

(6), when Guinness slowly removes his hat to reveal his almost unrecognizable face.

With disheveled hair, chronic dark circles, lipstick, and false teeth, Professor Marcus is at

once charming and creepy, yet there is never a doubt that he truly is the “Master Brain”

(17) of the operation. He shows his craftiness when he tries to manipulate the other four

men in order to get them to betray each other (1:13) and right before Louie’s demise

(1:25). His lunacy appears at this point, and he realizes that that “No really good plan

involves Mrs. Wilberforce” (1:23).

Following the Principle of Comic Logic, the filmmakers include clever uses of

music and sound effects—and also the same leitmotif musical formula utilized by

Chaplin in City Lights (1931). Mrs. Wilberforce is always accompanied by some light,

Classical melody that is reminiscent of a music box. The gang, on the other hand, is

accompanied by sinister music that seems to creep in any time they speak of the robbery

and when Professor Marcus scouts the train station (18). The music gets very intense

anytime that the gang fears that Mrs. Wilberforce has discovered the robbery, only to be

relieved when she has not (18). The same discovery motif plays when the gang returns to

the house to discover that the trunk has arrived (40) and when Mrs. Wilberforce figures

out the robbery (48) and confirms it through an eye match shot with Professor Marcus.

The music is ironic when Professor Marcus knocks Louie off the scaffolding (1:26) as it

is victorious—totally unassuming, just like Professor Marcus and the viewer—for no one

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knows that he is about to meet his own demise. In other scenes, the diegetic music creates

the humor, as when one of the parrots dances to the string quintet music (25) and when

the gang joins the group of elderly women in singing some old standards (52). The

following mock funeral procession (1:14) is both beautiful and satirical. The final

confrontation between Louie and Professor Marcus is intriguing because the smoke

screen and sound work to confuse the viewer as much as Louie is confused (1:25)—

utilizing the Principle of Comic Timing.

Like the music, many of the sound effects follow the Principle of Comic Logic

and work as comic motifs throughout the film. The sounds of trains constantly remind

the viewer of the house’s proximity to the station—these sounds take on a greater

meaning as the film proceeds, when the trains become the best way of disposing of

bodies. The same cartoon-sounding drum effect is heard each time one of the deceased

gang members is dropped onto a train (1:16, 1:18, 1:21, 1:23, 1:26), demonstrating a

nostalgicVaudeville style sound effect. In a similar way, the clunking sound of Mrs.

Wilberforce’s hammer violently hitting the water pipe contrasts comically with her petite

frame and delicate nature.

Most of the verbal gags work due to the Principle of Comic Sense, primarily as an

act of misunderstanding. Usually a character misunderstands Mrs. Wilberforce—as when

Professor Marcus believes that she has just told him that she has had four husbands, when

she is really talking about parrots (8) or when Louie believes that she means Harry is on

top of the cabinet, when it is really the parrot (20). One of the most amusing

misunderstandings occurs when Mrs. Wilberforce tells the men that she “knows the

truth” about them (15). They of course panic, but are relieved when she means that she

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believes they are professional, not amateur, musicians (15). Still in the vein of Comic

Sense, other verbal gags are a result of Mrs. Wilberforce being so oblivious and

understated about everything, like when she tells them that last time the parrot got away

the police and fire brigade took care of it (23) or when she tells Professor Marcus that the

cab driver would not take her money because “he said he was going into some other

business” (41)—the understated brand of humor is distinctly British. Mrs. Wilberforce is

at the same time funny and almost pitifully British when she believes everything that the

criminals tell her and then repeats their directions word for word to the police sergeant

and tells him to “please BUZZ OFF!” (59). Some of the funniest lines of the film are

said regarding Mrs. Wilberforce. For example, the exasperated street vendor complains

to the police “You know her and you let her wander around loose?!” (39).

The film also contains many visual gags. Many of them serve to convey the

characters. All of the pictures, and indeed, the entire house are crooked (7)—much like

the activities that occur inside the house. Mrs. Wilberforce has perfect timing and places

the kettle under the water tap just as it starts to pour (13)—indicating her familiarity with

the house. Some of the best visual moments occur when she attempts to bring the men

tea and they scramble to look as if they had been playing their instruments (14). The

pursuit of Major Gordon is one of the best sequences, including One Round breaking the

chair (22) and Major Courtenay ripping off the gutter (24). The gang’s first attempt to

leave the house contains visual gag after visual gag. Mrs. Wilberforce keeps stepping on

Professor Marcus’ scarf, but of course she is totally unaware of it (42), One Round’s

cello case gets stuck in the door (43), the money spills everywhere (44), all five men try

to get into the car at the same time (44), and the car repeatedly stops and goes as the men

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inside debate (45)—all of the compounding visual gags in this sequence work due to the

Principle of Comic Logic.

Several of the gags work as a synthesis between the visual and audio elements.

We see this during the robbery when four criminals try to squeeze into one phone booth

and all talk at once (34). A similar gag occurs when more and more old ladies keep

arriving at Mrs. Wilberforce’s house (47). Both gags work along the same lines as the

scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night At The Opera (Sam Wood 1935), when more and

more people keep showing up to Groucho’s cabin on the ship and attempt to fit inside.

Like so many comic heroes, Mrs. Wilberforce is unfailingly honest. When she

suspects that the street vendor is being cruel to the horse (36), she charges in to remedy

the situation. She is determined to do the right thing, even if that means having to “sew

mailbags” (1:00) in prison. Of course, she still feels bad for the poor men when they tell

her all their concocted sad stories (54). Mrs. Wilberforce is a pitiable figure as well as a

comic figure, because although she makes us laugh, we cannot help but feel sorry for her.

Visually, we see that she is lonely when the house is seen at night, with only one light on

(10). Verbally, she brings up her solitude quite often, “I would just like to say how very

happy I am that you are all here” (12) and she cannot help but interrupt them to wait on

them (19). We learn that her husband has been gone for 29 years (1:20) and her only

companions are the parrots. Demonstrating comedy’s frequent lack of resolution or

transformation, the film ends exactly as it begins, with the police humoring Mrs.

Wilberforce, and the viewer cheers for her when the sergeant suggests, “Why don’t you

just keep the money?” At the end of the scene, she breaks the recurring umbrella gag—

the same one that caused a panic during the robbery (34)—when she decides that she can

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buy a dozen new umbrellas now. The final shot of the film—an extremely wide aerial

shot of her house—is the same as the beginning, giving the viewer a sense that everything

is once again as it should be, or as English poet Robert Browning once wrote, “All’s right

with the world”.

Reception

As I stated above, The Ladykillers was a commercial hit across the world. Most

critics’ reviews at the time were favorable, though many agree that the film has several

flaws, of which the reader will soon learn. Variety liked the picture, especially the cast,

“Cecil Parker strikes just the right note as a conman posing as an army officer. Herbert

Lom broods gloomily as the most ruthless of the plotters, with Peter Sellers contrasting

well…. Danny Green completes the quintet”, although the reviewer felt that “Guinness

tends to overact the sinister leader”, apparently unaware of the Principle of Comic Logic,

particularly the quality of exaggeration. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called

the film a success, also praising the cast, especially Johnson, “a performer who does one

of the nicest bits of character acting you could ask for at any time”. He adds however

that he felt it was “slightly labored. Perhaps it does have the air of an initially brilliant

inspiration that has not worked out as easily as it seemed it should” and that “Michael

Balcon’s production in color gives the whole thing a slightly garish look that is not

wholly consistent with the humor”—once again supporting the argument that the praised

technology of the time, particularly full-color presentations, did not always serve comedy

film well. Andrew C. Mayer of The Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television, an

American trade publication, was more critical of the film than his contemporaries, stating

it “takes itself a little too seriously…. The film is therefore necessarily miscast because it

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is badly conceived; but it does have its humorous moments”. He was especially critical

of Guinness, “in his new role he is far less attractive; in all his previous performances he

was, basically, a sympathetic character who occasionally got away with murder, or some

lesser offense…. The lighthearted quality of Guiness’ early pictures is gone”,

overlooking Guinness’ preference for playing a broad array of characters in his career. I

believe that Mayer misses the distinctly British qualities of its humor—the understated

manner and utterly serious delivery.

Recent reviews have been more favorable than the contemporary reviews. In

2002, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian (London) called it “Subversive, hilarious and

more English than Elgar, though written by the American expatriate William Rose, this is

one of director Alexander Mackendrick’s masterpieces and a major jewel in the Ealing

Studios canon”. Adrian Hennigan of the BBC described it as a “wonderfully macabre

black comedy that really does improve with age”. Hennigan praised the cast saying,

“Guinness delivers a typically mesmerising performance…. While Guinness’ teeth could

have won a best supporting actor award in their own right, every performance shines

through in smog-filled London”. It is important to note that these two domestic

reviewers give the film more praise than the following American reviewers, who come

from a different cultural background and experience of comedy. While James Kendrick

of QNetwork called it “very much a stagy production”, he adds, “it is still one of the

funniest and most wicked British comedies ever made”. As with any film, there are of

course reviewers that find it flawed. Many such critics note how Mrs. Wilberforce seems

almost too oblivious throughout the picture—not acknowledging how she follows the

absentminded quality of the Principle of Comic Sense. Although he liked the film, Clark

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Douglas of DVD Verdict did say, “The film’s premise is honestly a little bit thin”.

Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews agreed, adding that the film is “Always

witty but never fully believable (it takes a lot of crafty writing and smart acting to make

the flawed plot line so workable)”. The worst review comes from Christopher Null of

Filmcritic.com, who gave it 3 out of 5 stars in a 2004 review. In the review, he said, “As

black comedies go, The Ladykillers is neither terribly black nor terribly comedic”. It is

important to note that, unlike many other British comedies, reviewers from both the

United Kingdom and the United States seemed to agree on many aspects of the film.

Legacy

The Ladykillers was the last Ealing comedy (Mackendrick x), for in the following

year, Ealing Studios was sold to the BBC and became the production house for many

television series (Vossler). In 2004, Joel and Ethan Coen remade the picture to fit an

American setting, but apparently, the inherently English qualities of the original

situations and characters did not translate well into Americanized ones, for by the time of

the remake’s premiere, so many film reviewers and scholars had written about how it was

far inferior to the original that it failed at the box office (Boxoffice Mojo). In 2006,

Premiere Magazine named The Ladykillers one of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time

(IMDb). Around the time of Ealing Studios’ 100

th

Anniversary in 2002, James

Christopher of The London Times called it “THE finest Ealing comedy…. The humour is

so dark, steely, and polished that it slides through the drama like a knife”. Jeff Stafford

of Turner Classic Movies stated that the film is:

a delightful black comedy that has aged much better than some of the other Ealing

entertainments from the same period. For one thing, the clever script by William

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Rose (it was nominated for an Oscar) is so impeccably British, conjuring up a

portrait of postwar London that is both idealized and satiric.

In the liner notes to the 2002 DVD of the film, filmmaker Rand Vossler describes the

appeal of the comedy, “Mackendrick deftly handles Rose’s masterful script that derives

most of its humor by contrasting the callousness of the thugs with the polite Victorian

sensibilities of their landlady and her circle of friends”. The addition of The Ladykillers

to the canon of British motion pictures added not only to the prestige of British comedy

worldwide, but of British film in general.

Of all the terms that critics use in their analyses of The Ladykillers, the most

prevalent are “English” and “British”—indicating that the Ealing comedies are a

subgenre of its own with a distinct set of conventions. The reviewers describe this comic

style as “brilliant”, “humorous”, “lighthearted”, “subversive”, “hilarious”, “black

comedy”, “mesmerizing”, “funny”, “wicked”, and “witty”. As for the criticisms of this

understated presentation of humor, reviewers use the terms “labored” and “too seriously”.

Perhaps a quality of the criticism of this subgenre is the fact that the critics seem to praise

the talents of the cast much more than the talents of the filmmakers. It seems as if the

reviewers are more able to find merit in a comic performance rather than in the craft of

creating a comedy as a whole.

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Case Study #7: Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder 1959)

“I tell you, it’s a whole different sex!” (Jack Lemmon, as Jerry)

Billy Wilder

When considering the comedy films of the 1950s United States, no filmmaker

comes close to Billy Wilder (1906-2002) in the sense of the quantity and the quality of

films:

The best postwar comedies of manners were Billy Wilder’s, who, with his

coauthor, I.A.L. Diamond, preserved the tradition of comic collaboration between

director and scenarist. Wilder’s comedy juxtaposed verbal wit with a sinister,

morally disturbing environment: comedy and the corruption of post-war Berlin (A

Foreign Affair, 1948), comedy and a psychotic has-been of the silent screen

(Sunset Boulevard, 1950); and a concentration camp (Stalag 17, 1953); and the

gangster underworld (Some Like It Hot, 1959); and the corruption of Madison

Avenue (The Apartment, 1960). The films vary in their balance of comedy and

moral seriousness (Mast “Comic Mind” 334).

As Wilder’s stature in the industry grew, he had the ability to attract some of the biggest

stars of the time to perform in his pictures, most notably Marilyn Monroe, who worked

with Wilder on this film as well as on The Seven Year Itch (1955). Film scholar Gerald

Mast places Wilder in a long line of comedy masters, “Although Billy Wilder reached the

peak of his comic career more than a decade after Lubitsch, Hawks, and Sturges, he was

a product of the same tradition and represented the last of that line” (Mast “Comic Mind”

272). Indeed, if Wilder had made The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot twenty years

earlier, they would have fit quite well into the Screwball Cbomedy subgenre.

Wilder often explored many of the same themes in the majority of his films,

particularly impersonation, “it is only in disguise that characters discover suppressed

aspects of themselves or perceive their society from a point of view denied to someone

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who always looks at it through the same, similarly attired eyes” (Cardullo 201) and

“sensitive sexual issues” (Phillips 268), both certainly showcased best in Some Like It

Hot. Mast concludes his statement on Wilder’s comedy with:

Wilder’s best film, certainly his funniest and probably his most effectively subtle

at examining social and human values, is Some Like It Hot. The film is a rich,

multilayered confection of parodies and ironies. It is a parody of gangster films...

and it is a parody of sexual love and romance.... Beneath all the wonderful fun,

Some Like It Hot implies that stereotypes hurt and kill…. Like Miss Monroe’s

whole performance, the song [“Through With Love”] slices through the film’s

wonderful silliness with its own kind of unspoken, unmistakable appeal. That

slicing—as well as the clever and complex silliness—is the very best of Billy

Wilder (“Comic Mind” 275-8).

One of Wilder’s greatest moments of praise came in 1995 when “the Library of Congress

claimed the films of this native Austrian as part of the American film heritage” (Phillips

343). Today, Wilder is remembered as one of the greatest film directors of any genre.

Jack Lemmon

Once again, we see an example of a sound comedy being the medium of

filmmaker and not comic performer, as Jack Lemmon (1925-2001) was not yet the

popular and critically acclaimed actor that we think of today. Wilder discovered him

through his Best Supporting Actor Academy Award win in 1956, for Mister Roberts

(John Ford 1955), a comedy (Phillips 213). Since Wilder was able to cast, “Curtis and

Monroe, UA no longer had an objection to his hiring Lemmon” (Phillips 214). Lemmon

was delighted with the screenplay when he first received it, “[Wilder] ended up saying,

‘Which means you’re going to play 85 percent of it in drag. You want to do it?’ I said

yes” (as quoted in Time Magazine). He believed that the reason the film succeeded was

due to the writing of Wilder and Diamond, “I have to tell you in all candor, and not

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because I was in it, I think it’s one of the best comedies I’ve ever seen” (Time). As the

reader will see in a later section, Lemmon’s performance in this film is considered one of

his greatest.

Tony Curtis

From its inception, Wilder wanted Curtis (1925-2010) to star in his film, “Today,

critics and audiences alike remember Curtis primarily for his role in this film” (Los

Angeles Times). His imitation of Cary Grant came as a result of working with Grant on

“Operation Petticoat, in which he played a submarine officer serving under a captain

played by Cary Grant” (Kehr). In the 1990s, Some Like It Hot was adapted into a stage

musical and Curtis appeared in it as Osgood Fielding (Newsweek).

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) was indisputably one of the biggest stars of the

Twentieth Century. More than 50 years after her death, she is still a major cultural icon,

“‘People are still intrigued by her’ says Curtis” (Time). However, many film scholars and

critics seem to overlook her great talent. Lemmon once said that she was “tremendously

important” (Time) to the success of the picture. Curtis adds that during production:

She was very distracted….Wilder just had her keep doing scenes over until she

finally let everything go and it was perfect…. [She was] late for work, didn’t

know her dialogue. She was giving everybody problems. They put a lot of

pressure on her, and she just couldn’t handle it (Time).

When the actors and crew of Some Like It Hot would complain about Monroe’s tardiness,

Wilder would say “My aunt in Tuscaloosa can be on time, but who the hell’s going to pay

to see my aunt in Tuscaloosa?” (Time). The addition of Monroe to the cast made Some

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Like It Hot the classic that it is today. Without her, the picture was simply an amusing

story about two men disguised as women—her screen presence was the icing on the cake

that made it something magical.

Production

The original idea of two male musicians joining an all girl band came from an

earlier German film Fanfarender Liebe or Fanfares of Love (Phillips 357), but according

to producer Walter Mirisch, “Billy used little material from the original film, except the

idea of two men who disguise themselves as women so they can get jobs in an all-girl

band. Nearly everything else was original” (Mirisch 100). Film scholar Bert Cardullo

describes the writing, “the real triumph of the writing is that even when we do not laugh,

the dialogue is funny” (194), bringing attention to the way in which a great comic writer

can control the comic structure outside of individual verbal gags. Screenwriter I.A.L.

Diamond and Wilder began writing the screenplay in 1958 (Phillips 215):

Wilder said that his relationship with Diamond was “like a marriage; We fought

all the time”…When it passed, they would go back to work…. The last third of

the script “is never finally formulated when we begin shooting,” Wilder noted.

The point is, “If you give the bosses the final third in advance, they can fire you at

any time” (Phillips 216).

At first, Wilder did not like the final line that Diamond wrote for Osgood, “Nobody’s

perfect”, but fortunately they agreed to keep it in and it is now one of the most

memorable closing lines in film history (Phillips 229).

While still working on the screenplay, Wilder began to think of the actors that he

wished to appear in the film. Most of the actors that he cast as the gangsters were already

well known as having appeared as gangsters in many other pictures (Mirisch 101). From

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the beginning, Wilder wanted Tony Curtis to star in his film, but Monroe and Lemmon

were not the people he envisioned in the particular roles. According to Curtis:

Wilder told me he wanted to get Frank Sinatra, and Mitzi Gaynor for the girl.

Then about a week later Billy told me he wasn’t going to use Frank. He said

Frank would only be trouble. And he said he wanted to get Marilyn instead of

Mitzi, even though everybody was warning Billy that Marilyn was going to be a

lot of trouble too. He didn’t care. He wanted Marilyn (Svetkey).

Monroe actually approached Wilder for the role, but was at first disgusted when she read

the screenplay:

Monroe was sick to death of playing dim-witted blondes in pictures. After

attending acting classes at the Actors Studio in New York in the fall of 1955, she

was eager to play serious roles. She had already played a seedy saloon thrush in

Bus Stop (1956) and proved that she could act. Hence she angrily threw the

synopsis of Some Like It Hot on the floor, declaring that “she had played dumb

characters before, but never this dumb! Monroe vehemently objected to playing a

showgirl so stupid that she can’t tell that the two women she is becoming friends

with are men in drag.” But, as Sarah Churchwell writes, “Marilyn’s character is

not the only one in the film who falls for the comically bad disguise; according to

the conventions of farce, all the characters are fooled by it.” Playwright Arthur

Miller, whom Monroe had married in June 1956, encouraged her to accept the

part. The scenario, he perceptively pointed out, was well structured and had the

makings of a solid screenplay. Wilder was delighted (Phillips 213).

To understand how the studio and filmmakers valued Monroe, it is important for the

reader to know that Monroe’s salary was three times that of Curtis’ or Lemmon’s and her

contract entitled her to ten percent of the film’s profits” (Phillips 214). Some Like It Hot

marked the beginning of the tragic final Chapter of Monroe’s life. While her antics

during the production sound like the product of a selfish and careless person, they were

the result of someone who was overwhelmed and struggling with addiction. Screenplay

editor Alison Castle described the situation as:

her anxiety level only increased her dependency on barbiturates, which she was

taking in alarming amounts… The following night Monroe “swallowed an

overdose of sleeping pills, not for the first time, she attempted suicide”…. As

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shooting wore on, Monroe’s takes were more and more “stretching into double

digits,” and the patience of her costars was wearing thin (Phillips 221).

According to producer Mirisch, the production had to extend an additional eighteen days

because of Monroe’s behavior and it caused the film’s budget to increase to $2.8 million,

“which at the time was a very high price tag for a comedy” (Phillips 222). At one point

during the production, Monroe suffered a miscarriage. One can assume it was due to her

drug and alcohol abuse, but husband Arthur Miller would forever blame Wilder.

Wilder’s decision to shoot the film in black and white had two reasons behind it.

First, he felt that it would be more fitting for the 1920s time period of the picture.

Second, he felt that Curtis and Lemmon’s makeup would have appeared far too ridiculous

in color. The only problem with this decision arose when Monroe’s contract “stipulated

that all of her films were to be shot in full color” (Phillips 217). However, once Monroe

saw the color tests with Curtis and Lemmon in drag, she agreed with Wilder that black

and white would be more suitable. According to Curtis, “Wilder brought a female

impersonator to the set to help us learn how to hold our arms so you can’t see the

muscles” (Svetkey). Regarding their outfits, Lemmon explained:

The dress wasn’t difficult. What was difficult was the shoes. Tony and I were

both getting shin splints. The minute Billy would say cut, we’d run and flop

down, and the prop men would come running up with big bowls of ice and Sea

Breeze, a soothing astringent. We’d just stick our feet in them (Time).

Curtis added, “We had to wear some tight underwear, so there wouldn’t be any

unnecessary bulges….We had these pieces of equipment built in that brought us down to

practically nothing” (Newsweek). In his book, Some Like It Wilder, Wilder biographer

Gene D. Phillips describes the definitive test of Curtis and Lemmon’s female

impersonations, “Lemmon, dragging a bewildered and somewhat shy Curtis behind him,

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went traipsing to the ladies’ room in the studio lobby. They sat in front of the mirror in

the lounge adjoining the women’s restroom” (216-217). Not a single woman noticed that

they were actually men, which Wilder considered to be a sign that they had succeeded in

their impersonations.

Wilder possessed a great knowledge of comedy, not only of the visual aspects of

comedy like Joe and Jerry’s appearance, but of comic timing as well. In the original

screenplay, for the scene after Joe’s night on the yacht and Jerry’s night on the dance

floor, Jerry was not playing the maracas:

The gimmick with the maracas “allowed time to pass for the audience to laugh,”

said Lemmon, and not lose the next straight line from Joe…. When Lemmon

finally saw the movie with an audience, he realized that “the manner in which

Wilder had paced the scene was brilliant.” Wilder had “sculpted and edited” the

scene to make room for laughs (Phillips 228).

Wilder’s insight went beyond comic timing to an ability to predict audience reactions.

Originally, Wilder wanted to title the film “Not Tonight, Josephine”. The title “Some

Like It Hot” actually first belonged to a Bob Hope movie from 1939. When Wilder

insisted that it would be the title of his film, the studio managed to buy the rights to the

title (Mirisch 103).

Once filming was complete, two problems arose. First, The Legion of Decency

objected to the film’s portrayal of cross-dressing as a legitimate lifestyle choice—that

recurring trend of the Production Code and Legion of Decency wishing to censor the

social transgressions inherent in comedy, as they did with It Happened One Night (1934),

Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Sullivan’s Travels (1942) decades earlier. However,

“Shurlock [the representative from the studio] responded to [The Legion], defending his

decision in favor of the movie by pointing out that men masquerading as women had

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been a perennial source of humor throughout theater and film history” (Phillips 222).

The second problem was a failed preview. United Artists made the poor decision to

screen the film at a local theater after a showing of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Richard

Brooks 1958), a drama:

The audience did not laugh because they apparently thought Some Like It Hot was

a serious melodrama too. Jack Lemmon remembered that people were leaving in

droves…. Wilder was devastated. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, an old friend of

Wilder’s, attended the preview. He put “a consoling arm around Wilder’s

shoulder” and murmured, “It’s alright, Billy; it happens to all of us.”

(Phillips 224).

Mirisch figured that the running time was too long, and ordered Wilder to shorten the

film by 10 minutes. However, Wilder decided to show the film in an unaltered version to

another test audience, “This audience laughed uproariously-not because Wilder had made

one small, token cut but because the audience had been alerted that the film was a

comedy” (Phillips 224), which supports my argument from Chapter I that comedy works

best when the viewer expects to encounter a comedy. Also, it demonstrates how the

conventions of other genres influence critics’ and audiences’ perceptions of comedy.

Some Like It Hot borrows the conventions of the crime and romance subgenres of drama,

but only to a point—the dramatic conventions serve to drive the narrative, yet that is

where their influence ends and the pure, gag-driven comedy takes over. When released,

the film opened slowly, but through word-of-mouth it soon became a hit (Mirisch 103).

The Film

One of the reasons that Some Like It Hot works is the fact that it is set 30 years

before it was made, which allows the conventions of the film to not appear dated to

Twenty First Century audiences, as it already gave the appearance of being dated at its

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release. The average viewer today is more likely to notice the cultural qualities of the

1920ws rather than the late 1950s filmmaking conventions.

It is not mere coincidence that the narrative is set in the 1920s. Beyond the

parallel atmospheres between both post-war decades of the 1920s and 1950s, the film is

set when the women’s liberation movement really took off. In the 1920s, recently

gaining the right to vote, women became more independent and self-expressive in terms

of fashion, social interaction, and business dealings. In the decade of the 1950s out of

which this film emerges, women achieved an entirely new level of autonomy. Women

that began to hold jobs during World War II, realized that they had a potential outside of

the home. Joe and Jerry’s experience of life as women symbolizes the women who began

to adopt societal functions that traditionally belonged to men. Jerry realizes that

marrying Osgood is his way out of poverty, whether Osgood is a man or not. Wilder

explained the situation as “But even when he forgot himself, he was not consciously

toying with the notion of engaging in a homosexual relationship. It was just the idea of

being engaged to a millionaire that was very appealing” (Phillips 229). While Joe and

Sugar share some time on the yacht, we see Jerry become more and more comfortable

with the prospect of marrying someone wealthy—albeit a man (1:30). With Sugar, we

see a woman who is content with the status quo of marrying up and of the traditional

nurturing qualities that society expects from a woman. She does not try to seduce Joe on

the yacht; in her mind, she is trying to help him (1:25). Audiences of both the 1920s and

the 1950s, turned from anxieties surrounding war and financesw to anxieties surrounding

gender roles, making 1929 a socially-relatable setting for 1959 audiences.

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As a necessary foil to the comedy of the picture, the Mobster sequences keep

interrupting the comic-romantic mood that develops in Florida—or, quite possibly, the

humor interrupts the narrative set down by the borrowed gangster conventions. Just as

the gangsters interrupt Joe and Jerry’s lives, so too do they interrupt the viewer, even

though the frame narrative is how Joe and Jerry are fleeing from the Mob—not Joe and

Jerry’s romantic encounters in Florida. The gangster inserts appear as a struggle to return

the narrative to a dramatic, and non-comic structure and although the gangster motifs

seem to be just a plot device to move the story along, they are in fact what make the

comic moments so successful. As a director that excelled in multiple genres, Wilder

understood how comedy’s power is at its best when the narrative disassociates from the

gags for a moment, and can include moments of sentimentality. When Sugar sings

“Through With Love” (1:55), it is truly heart wrenching and causes the viewer to be

completely off guard when “Josephine” kisses Sugar on stage (1:57).

With only one racial stereotype in the film, the Italian-American Mobsters, many

class stereotypes dominate—all borrowed from 1930s gangster pictures. As two

musicians, Jerry and Joe are poor and get work wherever they can. In a similar situation,

the only way someone like Sugar can live happily is to marry a wealthy man—even one

much older than she. Returning to the recurring theme of borrowed dramatic

conventions, Wilder catches the viewer off guard by opening the film with an action

sequence (2-8): the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” (19), which is quite violent for a

comedy. The comedy does not really begin until we meet Joe and Jerry (7)—showing the

traditional comic contrast between the straight characters and the comic heroes.

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Monroe’s exquisite talent shows in her ability to genuinely portray Sugar, who

claims to be ignorant (45). Ironically, after the three main characters go through the

experience of a lifetime, Joe and Jerry living as women and Sugar finding (who she

thinks is) the man of her dreams, they remain completely unchanged, sticking to the

conventions of comedy. Joe and Jerry are still running form the Mob and Sugar has once

again fallen for a saxophone player. All three main characters also have men after them:

Jerry has Osgood, Joe has the lascivious bellhop, and Sugar has Joe (in disguise of

course). This lack of character transformation—consider the same lack of closure in City

Lights (1931) or The Ladykillers (1955)—is relatively unheard of in drama, in which the

protagonist follows the heroic journey cycle and returns from the quest as a changed

person.

Wilder makes excellent use of visual and verbal motifs. “Spats” is not only the

character’s name, but also his most identifiable trait—demonstrating as Chaplin does in

City Lights (1931), how the filmmaker can reveal the shot of his Spats to the viewer, just

as Joe and Jerry see them—forming a parallel discovery through the Principle of Comic

Timing. The verbal motifs often serve as gags, like the recurring reference to type-O

blood—following the Principle of Comic Logic.

The most memorable running gag of this film, of course, is the female

impersonation, but what many reviewers fail to recognize is Joe’s second layer of

impersonation. As an excellent example of the Principle of Comic Experience, he not

only is a man who impersonates a woman, but a man who impersonates a woman, who

later disguises himself (?) as a rich man. One of the most classic of visual gags comes

from Joe, as the rich bachelor, when he trips Sugar on the beach (59) in order to get her

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attention—she literally falls for him. The same gag happens in many Screwball

comedies, but with the gender roles reversed. In Bringing Up Baby (1938), David slips

on Susan’s olive, while in The Lady Eve (1941), Charles trips over Jean’s foot.

Reception

Producer Walter Mirisch described Some Like It Hot as a “smash hit” (154). It

was one of the highest grossing films of 1959 (Phillips 224, BoxOffice Mojo). Phillips

claims that “At the time of its release, the very popularity…. was reason enough for some

critics to write it off as a mere crowd pleaser. But over the years the movie has gained

stature, and it is now considered one of Wilder’s major achievements” (229). According

to critic Barry Norman, Monroe’s performance “made her tiresome and troublesome

behavior during production seem ‘worth it’” (229). Wilder later said, “Many actresses

were more reliable, but no one was as convincing or had better technique” (229).

Monroe won a Golden Globe award for her performance (229). One criticism of the film

was due to Lemmon’s performance because he “seemed to be enjoying his role too much.

It was virtually the only female impersonation sustained throughout an entire film since

the teens” (Russo 7). According to Tim Dirks of American Movie Classics Filmsite,

Some Like It Hot “was the all-time highest-grossing comedy up to its time, one of the

most successful films of 1959, and Wilder’s funniest comedy in his career”. Variety

praised the film, saying “Some Like It Hot, directed in masterly style by Billy Wilder, is

probably the funniest picture of recent memory. It’s a whacky, clever, farcical comedy

that starts off like a firecracker and keeps on throwing off lively sparks till the very end”.

Both reviews particularly praise the comedy. The National Board of Review declared it

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one of the Top Ten Films of 1959. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards,

Best Directing, Best Writing (Adaption), Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Art Direction

(Black and White), Best Cinematography (Black and White), and Best Costume Design

(Black and White). Orry-Kelly won for costume design (oscars.org). The reader should

remember that the 32

nd

Academy Awards was when William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959)

won a record eleven Academy Awards, including Best Directing and Best Actor. As for

the remaining three nominations for Some Like It Hot, Art Direction (Black and White)

and Cinematography (Black and White) went to The Diary of Anne Frank (George

Stevens 1959), while Writing (Adaption) went to Room At The Top (Jack Clayton 1959),

a drama-romance (oscars.org).

Over the past decade, encouraged by several home video releases, more critics

have reviewed the picture than ever before. Many reviewers praise the film for its overall

product, “one of those rare movies where all the elements gel all the time”, as Michael

Thomson of the BBC described it. In 2006, Ty Burr of Time Magazine said “Nobody’s

perfect, but Billy Wilder’s transvestite farce comes awfully close”. Clark Douglas of

DVD Verdict said that the film is “only regarded as a comedic masterpiece because…

every … element is handled with such professionalism and wit”. Roger Ebert of the

Chicago Sun-Times called it “one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of

inspiration and meticulous craft”, and that the “screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

is Shakespearean in the way it cuts between high and low comedy, between the heroes

and the clowns”. Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews said “The broad

slapstick juxtaposed against the hard-hitting gangland scenes, worked amazingly well

even if some scenes seemed forced”—using “forced” as a term to describe comedy that

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does not seem to register. Schwartz brings attention to the way in which this film, like so

many other film comedies borrows the conventions of a non-comic genre.

Many reviewers praise Monroe’s performance. Jeffrey M. Anderson of

Combustible Celluloid called it “Monroe’s greatest film”. Ed Howard of Seul Le Cinema

commented on the necessity of Monroe in the film when he said “Of course, the

transformation of Curtis and Lemmon into a pair of very unlikely-looking women, funny

as it is, wouldn’t be nearly as brilliant without a true avatar of femininity to contrast

against them”. Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine described the suspension of disbelief

necessary of the viewer when he remarked, “Of course, Joe and Jerry are the only men

who seem interested in actually courting Sugar Kane”. Regarding Monroe, Tomas

Alfredson of The Telegraph said, “she is acting stupid of course—which takes a lot of

intelligence. She must have been a very intelligent woman—you can see that masterfully

in this film”.

Regarding its longevity and continued relevancy, Brad Laidman of FilmThreat,

said it is “as funny today as it was when it was first released”. James Kendrick of

QNetwork stated “In the annals of film comedy, there are a select few films that truly

stand out as having withstood the test of time—that are just as funny now, if not funnier,

than they were when first released—and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot is right at the

top”. Angie Errigo of Empire Magazine called it “A joyful classic which delivers on

comedic value no matter how many times you’ve seen it”. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out

New York Magazine called it “the Great American Comedy (if you discount the Marx

Brothers)”.

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Of the couple less than favorable reviews that I was able to find, the main

criticism is that the entire film centers around a “one-joke premise”, as Jeremy Heilman

of MovieMartyr.com described it. David Nusair of Reel Film added, “The American

Film Institute recently declared Some Like It Hot to be the funniest movie ever made.

And while that may have been true upon its release (which was some odd 40 years ago),

it’s certainly not true now. It’s a different kind of funny - based mostly upon double

entendres and dry one-liners—more likely to elicit smiles and chuckles rather than full-

fledged belly laughs”. Clearly, both reviewers have difficulty judging the success of a

comedy besides relying on quantifying it according to how many jokes it contains or how

many times it elicits laughter, once again returning to the mindset of Vaudeville

managers.

Legacy

Following the success of the film, Wilder commented, “Producer David Selznick

told me mixing gangsters and comedy wouldn’t work. In fact, it did” (Phillips 211),

describing how comedy must borrow the conventions of non-comic genres in order to be

successful. Producer Walter Mirisch added, “If one wanted to make Some Like It Hot

today, I don’t think it could be done any better. Neither the style, nor the casting, nor the

writing or direction could be improved upon” (102). In the 1960s, Mirisch presented a

pilot for a proposed television show based on Some Like It Hot, but the project never

happened (103). In 2006, Premiere Magazine named Some Like It Hot as one of the 50

Greatest Comedies of All Time, one of the 25 Greatest Screenplays of All Time, and

Lemmon’s performance as one of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (Phillips

230). Wilder and Diamond went on to cowrite many more successful features, several of

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them starring Jack Lemmon (230). Film scholar Bert Cardullo claims that Some Like It

Hot is still a significant film for four reasons:

It is the best film by the last European director to flourish in this country.... It is

the best film of the last great sex star created by Hollywood. It is the last of the

carefree American comedies that sprang up when sound came in, bloomed

through the thirties, and had a revival after World War II. And it is the last really

good film farce produced in the United States to date” (192).

Although the reviewers praise the filmmakers’ “inspiration”, “meticulous craft”, and

“professionalism”, the presence of a skilled comic performer like Monroe returns the

critical focus from the comic filmmaker, as it had been for so many sound films, to the

comic performer. When they analyze the comedy of Some Like It Hot, the critics use the

terms “funny”, “whacky”, “clever”, “farcical”, “firecracker”, “Shakespearean”, “high”,

“low”, “heroes”, “clowns”, “wit”, and “slapstick”. Some Like It Hot is a prime example

of how comedy films borrow the conventions of non-comic genres, gangster pictures in

this case, and of how a comic film needs no resolution—the protagonists end in the same

situations in which they began.

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Case Study #8: Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks 1974)

“it’s pronounced ‘Fronkensteen’” (Gene Wilder, as Frederick Frankenstein)

Mel Brooks

By the time he made Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks (1926-) was already one of

the leading creators of parody in the world:

In his two best comedies, before this, The Producers and Blazing Saddles, Brooks

revealed a rare comic anarchy. His movies weren’t just funny, they were

aggressive and subversive, making us laugh even when we really should have

been offended. (Explaining this process, Brooks once loftily declared, “My

movies rise below vulgarity.”) (Ebert).

Brooks understood how audiences came to parodies with numerous expectations, which

some of his most successful gags would purposely go against to achieve their success:

their stunning violations of a familiar formula…. Musical numbers in the Mel

Brooks films consistently produce the most delightful anomalies-just as they did

in the Marx Brothers parodies….when Young Frankenstein reaches its musical

numbers it takes a leap into wild illogic that justifies and excuses the more

predictable moments of the parody (Mast “Comic Mind” 311).

Mel Brooks is perhaps the most prolific filmmaker-parodist of the Twentieth Century,

exploring various subjects like the Old West (Blazing Saddles, 1974), silent film (Silent

Movie, 1976), Alfred Hitchcock thrillers (High Anxiety, 1977), world history (History of

the World: Part I, 1981), science fiction (Spaceballs, 1987), the Middle Ages (Robin

Hood: Men in Tights, 1993), and vampires (Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 1995). Brooks

was at his peak in 1974, releasing two of the most popular and critically acclaimed

parodies, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Brooks feels that Young

Frankenstein is his best film, but he gives all the credit to the power of Mary Shelley’s

novel:

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I wrote The Producers, and the bones of The Producers are very good, but I don’t

know how enduring The Producers is and I know how enduring Mary Shelley’s

characters are…. The other shoe that we drop in Young Frankenstein is emotion,

great emotion. You can call it father and son, the creator and his creation, that’s

the real love story that Mary Shelley devised (Lacher).

With Young Frankenstein, Brooks achieved a new level of sophistication for parody.

Few films are as fine a parody as this one. It lampoons the conventions of previous,

dramatic film adaptations of Shelley’s novel—and yet at the same time, it approaches her

novel in a reverent way. His film reveals the necessity of the borrowing of the

conventions of tragedy in order for comedy to succeed. Many scholars argue, and

through my research I concur with their statement, that Brook’s comedy is far closer to

the spirit and themes of Shelley’s original work than the earlier, “serious” pictures. In an

unintentionally backwards way, I viewed this film years before James Whale’s

Frankenstein (1931), which resulted in me feeling horribly underwhelmed when I finally

saw the latter film. I can say in all honesty that Young Frankenstein is truly a superior

film, for it simply has a tighter narrative, more carefully crafted tension and release, and

is a more genuine portrayal of Shelley’s characters, particularly The Creature. The plot

points and character motivations of Young Frankenstein are clear and succinct, no matter

how absurd they may be. On the contrary, Frankenstein (1931), just ends with Henry

Frankenstein’s father celebrating with young women after the monster is apparently gone

forever. It presents the denouement necessary to a non-comic film, yet it feels tacked

on—almost an attempt to distract the viewer from the real tragedy of The Creature.

Though not necessary to a comedy, Young Frankenstein does present a resolution for The

Creature, as he becomes the intellectual of Shelley’s novel—however, the primal

instincts that The Creature had displayed now seem to have been brought out in Victor—

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perhaps arguing that those instincts were always within him, but repressed.

I find the creation scene of Young Frankenstein as much of an aesthetic experience

as when Sir Laurence Olivier recites a Shakespearean soliloquy. It is here in the film that

the line between the conventions of comedy and the borrowed ones of drama blurs the

most. The platform slowly raises as Frederick’s enormous shadow covers the wall (44).

As I stated above, Young Frankenstein comes closest to the intellectual Creature of

Shelley that reads frequently and is quite eloquent. Brooks presents a bourgeois Creature

that reads the Wall Street Journal (1:44), while Karloff’s portrayal presents a stiff-limbed

mute who merely stumbles around:

Nothing about the creature she presents to us is more poignant than his longing to

be loved. In Young Frankenstein, Elizabeth gratifies this desire. Acting out-

campily, to be sure—the creature’s deepest fantasy, she plays a loving Beauty to

his Beast. Wacky as it is, the monster’s marriage to Elizabeth in Young

Frankenstein also points directly to the sexual energies that Mary Shelley’s Victor

so perversely thwarts in himself and the monster alike (Heffernan 152).

Brooks’ film is as much another, equally valid, interpretation of Shelley’s novel, as it is a

parody of past interpretations. It not only explores the themes of Shelley, but the role of

comedy as a direct foil to drama. Comedy reveals the painful truth of The Creature’s

longings beneath the surface of his actions more readily than tragedy can. Young

Frankenstein works exactly because it gives us better access to Shelley—a direct

approach that only the genre of comedy allows.

The Cast

Of all the films in which Gene Wilder appeared, Young Frankenstein is his

personal favorite (IMDb). Critics recognize the role of Frederick Frankenstein as one of

Wilder’s greatest performances. In 2006, Premiere Magazine named it 9

th

on its list of

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the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (IMDb). Note the term “Greatest

Performances” is not limited to “Greatest Comic Performances”. Both Cloris Leachman

and Peter Boyle began their comedy careers with this film. Leachman later went on to

star in the “Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Television executive Mark Legan commented,

“Her performance… in… Young Frankenstein was one of the funniest, out-there comedic

performances I have ever seen” (Time). Peter Boyle went on to star in the sitcom

“Everybody Loves Raymond”, but he still considered the role of the monster in this film

as “the highlight of [his] career” (Time). In 1975, Golden Globe nominations went to

Cloris Leachman (Best Lead Actress in a Comedy/Musical) and Madeline Kahn (Best

Supporting Actress in a Comedy/Musical) for their performances in Young Frankenstein.

Production

The seminal idea for Young Frankenstein came from the mind of Gene Wilder

while he was working with Brooks on Blazing Saddles (1974). Brooks recalls, “His idea

was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the

family whatsoever. He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, ‘That’s funny’” (Lacher).

The screenplay contained many references to actual scientists and historical figures

including Erasmus Darwin and Hans Delbruck (IMDb), appealing to the well-informed

audience members. Many scholars fail to recognize that a “crude” humor is capable of

this intellectual appeal. Much of the techniques used in the making of this film actually

came from the Universal horror series that it parodies, including the use of green makeup

for the creature, and the original sets and laboratory equipment:

When Mel Brooks was preparing Young Frankenstein, he found that Ken

Strickfaden, who had made the elaborate electrical machinery for the lab

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sequences in the Universal Frankenstein films, was still alive in the Los Angeles

area. He visited Strickfaden and found that Strickfaden had saved all the

equipment and had it stored in his garage. Brooks made a deal to rent the

equipment for his film and gave Strickfaden the screen credit he’d deserved, but

hadn’t gotten, for the original films (IMDb).

Brooks took care to remain true to the original films, making his parody work so much

better by copying the original conventions so precisely—causing the viewer to realize

how one takes the conventions for granted in the original source.

When writing the screenplay, Brooks initially objected to Wilder’s ideas for two

of the film’s most memorable gags, the “walk this way” bit (IMDb) and the entire music

hall sequence (Lacher). A couple of the film’s gags were improvised on the set. Igor’s

hump that keeps moving from side to side was an idea of Marty Feldman (IMDb) and

Gene Hackman’s line “I was gonna make espresso” was completely ad-libbed during

filming (Fristoe).

Once the filmmakers previewed the first cut of the film for test audiences, it was

“twice as long as the final cut” (IMDb). The preview audiences hated it, and it appeared

to Brooks and company that it was a failure. Wilder and Brooks got together and cut the

film down considerably. Brooks said:

I didn’t want it to be longer than 90 minutes....Your energy is used a lot more

when you’re watching a comedy; more of you is given to the film. You can’t sit

through a comedy for more than 90 minutes; it puts you in a very high metabolic

state. You can’t be that high for that long. If you’re in that state for more than 90

minutes, you’ll crash. And it can’t all be big laughs—you have to give the

audience a chance to catch its breath and gear up for the next assault (Fine).

For the final cut, the two men had eliminated “all the jokes that didn’t work” (IMDb).

Both felt that the final cut was far superior to the original cut. The experience of the test

audience reminds the reader of the communal nature of comedy. The live feedback of the

test audience is the same phenomenon of spectator participation in the Medieval Carnival

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the audience reactions to live Vaudeville acts, and the Marx Brothers’ road shows.

Brooks’ discussion of the running time of the picture alludes to the episodic nature of

comedy—shown so well through Vaudeville. The shorter (than drama) runtime of a

feature comedy seems to be an audience expectation, related to the aforementioned

audience feedback.

The Film

To me, Young Frankenstein is an excellent example of masterful filmmaking that

is severely overlooked simply because it is a comedy. The film opens with the tragic

theme music and one seamlessly edited sequence (0-6). Indeed, like several shots of

Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), the shot goes from a slow dolly towards a distant castle,

through to a shot of the courtyard, through the window to the room, with a shocking

finish at the opening coffin. The first visual gag occurs nearly 4 minutes into the film,

when the skeleton will not let go of the will. In this sequence, we witness the

expansiveness of parody—Brooks does not have to parody specifically one subject, but

can mock the conventions of all drama. Much as in the opening of Some Like It Hot, the

sense of drama instantly shatters to reveal comedy as soon as just one dramatic

convention breaks.

Beyond the characters that come from Shelley’s novel, Brooks’ presents his own

original characters so well. Frederick Frankenstein’s personality is established through

his interactions with others. We see his lecture students first (6) and then we first see him

as he corrects a student on the pronunciation of his name. His eccentricity becomes

apparent when he argues with a student and consequently stabs himself in the leg (11).

Through Inga and Elizabeth, we see two female stereotypes. Inga is the naïve assistant

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who relies on men for her worldview and seems to be willing to copulate with little

encouragement needed. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is the high-maintenance girlfriend

who controls the men around her—indeed, Frederick is not sure whether to adore her or

to fear her. However, we see that no matter how prim and proper she seems to be, the

Monster still brings out the same latent, primal feelings within her.

With the oft-quoted “walk this way” gag (17), the film demonstrates the innate

humor in misinterpreting the meaning of a phrase, following the Principle of Comic

Sense. In much the same way, Frederick, Igor, and Inga channel Chico Marx with the

“werewolf” routine (18) and later the “knockers” misunderstanding (19). Brooks

expertly handles the power of the Principle of Comic Logic, especially repetition, with

the whinnying horses every time a character speaks Frau Blücher’s name. Many of the

gags work with one of two extremes of the Principle of Comic Timing—anticlimax and

surprise. The tension holds as Frederick reaches for the door handle and instantly fizzles

out as the handle breaks (28). Shortly thereafter, the viewer jumps when a succession of

skulls in a shelf reveals Igor (29). Some gags function at a level of pure irony and

absurdity. Frederick’s grandfather leaves the book How I Did It (32), Igor visits the

Brain Depository (40), and Inga warns Frederick, “you’ll kill him” as he chokes the dead

corpse (48).

Brooks understands that the viewers of his film have preconceived notions of

what should happen in his film based on what they experienced with the Universal horror

pictures. Often the funniest moments in Young Frankenstein are a result of Brooks

purposefully thwarting those very expectations. This occurs most notably when the

creature plays by the well with the little girl (1:06), an almost shot for shot replica of the

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scene in Frankenstein (1931). Boyle’s look to the camera when the girl asks, “what

should we throw in now?” confirms that the viewer expects the creature to throw her in,

as occurred in the original film. The following shot of them on the seesaw is so effective

because it is so unexpected. The only real aside from the Frankenstein (1931) narrative

is the music hall scene (1:17), which is more reminiscent of King Kong (Merian C.

Cooper 1933), yet still in the classic horror vein.

Any humor at the expense of one’s cultural background in Young Frankenstein

comes as an exaggeration of the characters portrayed in the original Universal horror

pictures. Brooks does not mock people from Eastern Europe; rather, he mocks the

stereotypes of these people as they are portrayed in the Universal horror films. One of

the recurring gags is that the locals cannot understand their shared accent. We witness

Frau Blücher struggle with Frankenstein’s name (22) and none of the townspeople can

understand the inspector (50)—what I take to be a mocking of the feeling native English

speakers get when they encounter a person with a foreign accent—they assume that

someone with an accent cannot even understand himself. A running gag such as this

combines the Principle of Comic Logic (the recurrence) and the Principle of Comic Sense

(the misunderstanding).

Brooks is perhaps one of the greatest presenters of purely visual gags since

Chaplin—whether it is darts covering the police car as it pulls away (1:01) or when a

member of the town posse walks directly into a tree (1:32). As I mentioned above,

throughout his career, Brooks was known for crude humor. The lack of profanity

throughout the film makes the inspector’s curse, as his wooden arm rips off, so effective

(1:41). While there are very few elements of slapstick in the film, the few that do exist—

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Frederick getting squished by the bookcase (26) and Frederick playing charades while the

creature chokes him (55)—work splendidly.

Reception

Young Frankenstein was highly profitable. With a budget of $2.8 million (about

$13 million today), it ended up grossing $86 million (nearly $400 million today)

(BoxOffice Mojo). It reassured the public and film executives of Brooks’ box office

appeal that he had established with The Producers (1968) and Blazing Saddles (1974).

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Sound and Best Writing

(Adaption), but did not win either. Tim Dirks of American Movie Classics Filmsite

remarks that it was odd that Madeline Kahn and Gene Wilder were not nominated for

their performances and that Gerald Hirschfield was not nominated for his

cinematography. If we consider the cinematography of the opening sequence, for

example, we see that it serves as a running visual gag that continually mocks the

cinematic conventions of dramatic presentation. It is for this reason, I surmise, that no

reviewers thought to recognize Hirschfield’s contribution, as critics only saw his work as

a parody of cinematographer Gregg Toland’s style .

At the time of its release, the reviews were overwhelmingly favorable. Roger

Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said that “it works on a couple of levels: first as comedy,

and then as a weirdly touching story in its own right”, alluding to its unique interpretation

of Shelley’s work. Box Office Magazine gave the film a positive review and noted that

Brooks “takes on horror movies, a field that has sometimes been funny when the films

were done too seriously”, raising thet point of how daring Brooks had to be in order to

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parody a series of pictures that elicit laughter in their own right. Both reviewers talk

about the necessity of an original, non-comic source for parody to work. Jay Cocks of

Time Magazine liked the film, especially the dance hall sequence, which he called “some

sort of deranged high point in contemporary film comedy”. The sequence curiously

stands out because of its furthest departure from the novel. The one negative review that

I found comes from Stanley Kauffman of The New Republic. In it, he mostly complained

about the running time, which he thought was too long, “Brooks is a funny joke-and-gag

man, but not 104- minutes funny”. Vincent Canby of the New York Times, focused on

the gags as well, “Mel Brooks’s funniest, most cohesive comedy to date…. Some of the

gags don’t work, but fewer than in any previous Brooks film that I’ve seen, and when the

jokes are meant to be bad, they are riotously poor. What more can one ask of Mel

Brooks?” Notice how Canby addresses the narrative structure through the term

“cohesive” and describes the gags as “riotous” and also implies that one should not

expect more from a comic filmmaker than a few funny gags. I find it interesting that only

two of these five reviewers acknowledge the necessity of the conventions of the

established Frankenstein lore for the parody to succeed.

Unlike most of the other comedies profiled in the other case studies, quite a few

of the more recent reviews of the film have been negative, much more so than when it

premiered. I attribute this partly to the fact that so many later comedies, like The Naked

Gun series, The Scary Movie series, and even some television comedies, have copied

Brook’s manner of parody so closely, that the humor of Young Frankenstein does not

seem to be as fresh and original as it genuinely is. As for the less than favorable reviews,

in 1999, Donald Liebenson of the Chicago Tribune said, “Viewed from a Marxist (as in

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Brothers) perspective, Young Frankenstein is Brooks’ Night at the Opera. It is not his

purest, funniest film, but it is his most sustained, satisfying, and accessible”. His terms

“pure” and “funny” describe the gags, while “sustained”, “satisfying”, and “accessible”

describe the narrative—ignoring the necessary balance between them. In 2007, Dennis

Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews complained that “Most of the gags were

juvenile and bombed”, adding that “The best parody of Frankenstein is Whale’s own

followup of The Bride of Frankenstein”, aechoing early statements of the source series’

(unintended) laughable quality.

The majority of reviews are still positive. Unlike the earlier reviewers, almost

every Twenty First Century reviewer focuses on the necessity of Shelley’s novel and

Whale’s interpretation to the success of Brook’s comedy. In 2006, Ryan Keefer of DVD

Verdict said, “If James Whale’s films are the gold standard, then Brooks’ interpretation

of the Mary Shelley characters is a more unspoken, yet outstanding sequel to the

original”. In 2009, independent critic Cole Smithey, stated that “Mel Brooks caught

comic lightning in a bottle” and added that it contains “an atmosphere of reverent delight

beneath its bawdy puns and outrageous physical humor”. Bill Gibron of Filmcritic.com,

loved the film stating, “No one could have expected the abject brilliance that was his take

on the terror genre” adding that there is “something so satisfying about this movie, so

likeable and loving that it’s hard to look at the rest of Brooks’s canon in a similar light”.

Adam Smith of Empire Magazine called it “a marvelously crafted, beautifully shot

comedic homage to James Whale’s 1931 classic”, adding that it is “a perfect example of

early Brooks firing on all comic cylinders, and what it demonstrates is that for spoof to

work, the spoofers must have deep affection for the material” that they parody. The

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statements of these reviewers reinforce my argument that Young Frankenstein is one of

the finest examples of parody, for they not only acknowledge his faithfulness to Shelley’s

novel, but his superior filmmaking sense over that of Whale. Parody’s closeness to its

source allows reviewers to clearly evaluate it against the source material. With these few

reviews, we see a faint comic blip on the radar of film criticism, in that these critics

directly praise a comic filmmaker as having created a work more significant than that of a

“serious” filmmaker. Supporting their arguments, look at the terms these reviewers use,

“gold”, “outstanding”, “lightning”, “brilliance”, “marvelous”, and “beautiful”—I argue

that these are similar to terms that literary critics would use to describe Shelley’s novel,

once again indicating the film’s closeness to its inspiration.

Legacy

The film was an undisputable triumph for Brooks. He took great pride in his

work on Young Frankenstein:

It’s the best thing I ever directed; the direction was superb. And I don’t mind

being immodest. But I wasn’t nominated for it. They didn’t nominate directors for

comedy in those days. Woody Allen broke through on that score with Annie Hall.

He gave comedy a respectable name. I didn’t. I was too vulgar. (Fine)

Although Brooks’ statement reinforces the argument that most comedy films are denied

critical recognition, his remark about Woody Allen does not take past comedies like It

Happened One Night and Some Like It Hot into account. I shall go into more detail about

Woody Allen later in this chapter.

Since its release, Young Frankenstein has never really fallen out of the public eye.

In 2006, Premiere Magazine voted it one of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time

(IMDb). In 2008, Brooks premiered “Young Frankenstein: The Musical” (Lacher) on

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Broadway, bringing his story to even more audiences, so that the work’s influence could

now extend into media beyond film. Brooks shares his philosophy of comedy when he

comments that the film “was meant to be seen in theaters. ‘We’re losing communal

laughter and joy,’ he says. ‘One fat bald guy in a summer undershirt drinking a Michelob

Light in front of a TV is not what this was designed for’ (Fine). Once again, we see an

argument for comedy as a group experience—an experience that the development of the

home video forever changed. The private nature of home video opens up a new

experience of isolation and alienation from others—a theme that comedy explores in a

unique way, and a thread that I shall address in Chapter IV. Young Frankenstein will

always remain a shining example of how far parody can go—yet how seriously it can

treat its subject. As a comic hero, we may laugh at Victor Frankenstein’s antics, but we

never lose respect for his genuine belief that he can do the impossible.

With the reviews included in this case study, we find two clear foci of critics: the

way in which Brooks uses the original sources and the nature of the film’s gags. To

speak of the film’s relation to the novel and earlier pictures, reviewers use terms like

“touching”, “satisfying”, “sustained”, “accessible”—I might add, words that could be

used to describe narrative construction. As for the comic moments, reviewers use the

terms, “aggressive”, “subversive”, “deranged”, “funny”, “joke”, “gag”, “riotous”, “pure”,

“parody”, “bawdy”, and “puns”. I would like to point out that many of these terms could

work in writing about the works of Aristophanes, Dante, and Boccaccio, among others.

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Case Study #9: 10 (Blake Edwards 1979)

“On a scale from 1 to 10, she’s an 11!” (Dudley Moore, as George Webber)

Blake Edwards

Though never universally recognized for his skill, the work of Blake Edwards

(1922-2010) has drawn new attention from critics in the past couple of decades. In a

career spanning nearly 50 years, he experimented in practically every genre of film,

making notable contributions to romance (Breakfast At Tiffany’s [1961], The Tamarind

Seed [1974]), drama (The Days of Wine and Roses [1962]), thriller (Experiment in Terror

[1962]), war (Operation Petticoat [1959], What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? [1966],

although it is debatable whether these pictures fit better into the war subgenre or the

comedy genre), crime (Gunn [1967]), musical (Darling Lili [1969], Victor/Victoria

[1982]), Western (Wild Rovers [1971]), and of course, comedy (The Great Race [1965],

The Party [1968], and The Pink Panther series). Cinema Journal describes him as:

quite a controversial director. To the industry, Blake Edwards is known for the

success of the Pink Panther films and “10.” To film fans, he’s the husband of

Julie Andrews. To film scholars, he’s a second-rate director with a small cult

reputation…. his background in television and radio (22).

Film scholar Gregg Rickman praises his “complex departures from many norms and

conventions of both classical and contemporary film practices” (33-34) and adds

“Someone someday will have to analyze Edwards’s use of space more extensively.... His

inventive use of framing and screen space, including off-screen space, deserves a chapter

of its own, for even the worst of Edwards’s films contain hilarious sight gags made so by

his formal flair” (34). Film scholar Bill Desowitz says that “every Edwards film

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alternates between comedy and suspense” (50) and describes his style as “anarchic and

eclectic” (51). Desowitz’s statement demonstrates how Edwards truly understands not

only how comedy needs to borrow the conventions of drama in order to succeed, but also

that a comic picture can in fact take these dramatic conventions and present them in a

superior way than drama alone could. By contrasting the comedy with the pathos in his

films, as Chaplin, Sturges, Wilder, and others had done, Edwards shows how the comic

elements make the tragic ones that much more moving and, likewise, how the tragic

elements make the comic ones that much funnier.

One of the interesting aspects of Blake Edwards’ career is his professional

relationship with his wife, Julie Andrews. It is partly because of Edwards, that Andrews

was able to branch out into roles that she never would have been offered by most studios,

which usually considered her only to be suitable for children’s pictures and musicals. In

the films of Edwards, Andrews had the opportunity to play complex, mature characters

without losing her public, family-friendly appeal. In my opinion, Edwards is one of the

most under-recognized filmmakers of the past century, and I hope that someday this

status will reverse.

Dudley Moore

Today, in all honesty, viewers may remember Bo Derek—who portrays a

character whose physical attractiveness is supposed be her defining attribute—more so

than any other performer in 10, but Dudley Moore (1935-2002) is the clear star of the

picture. Moore began his career in comedy with his longtime stage partner Peter Cook.

Together, they created a popular television series called “Beyond the Fringe”, which

inspired later sketch comedy series and troupes, including Monty Python. Moore

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transitioned to Hollywood in the late 1970s, “his Hollywood breakthrough as a hapless

swinger in Foul Play (1978)” (Time). When Blake Edwards hired him for the role of

George, “He was still virtually unknown in this country”(Time). Moore’s greatest

success came two years later with Arthur (Steve Gordon 1981), which “made him a

household name” (Burr). Unfortunately, his two most successful films caused him to be

typecast for subsequent roles and he never got to experiment with the versatility that he

had expressed before entering the motion picture industry.

Production

Edwards actually first wrote the screenplay for 10 in the early 1970s but for

whatever reason, did not attempt to produce the film until years later. He “was inspired

to write this script when he caught a brief glimpse of a woman on the way to her

wedding” (IMDb), an event replicated by George in the film. Edwards’ first choice for

the role of George was actually Peter Sellers, with whom Edwards had worked on the

Pink Panther films as well as on The Party (1968), but Sellers “just didn’t feel [he] was

right for the part” (TCM), and so he turned it down. Actor George Segal was all set to

play the role on the first day of filming, but “walked off the set” once production began

(TCM), leaving the role to Moore. It was never entirely clear why Segal left, but in

several subsequent interviews, he has alluded that he was afraid to have been

overshadowed by Bo Derek (Crawley). Edwards considered many actresses for the role

of Jenny, including “Melanie Griffith who turned it down. Kay Lenz was offered the role

of Jenny but turned the role down. Kim Basinger and Christie Brinkley were both

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considered ” (IMDb). Julie Andrews was Edwards’ one and only choice for the role of

Sam.

The Film

Few films establish their premise and characters as quickly as 10. The simple

titles appear on black with a simple piano theme (establishing pianist George before the

viewer ever meets him), which dissolves to reveal a dark house (1). The viewer is

equally as surprised by the party as is George (2). Within minutes, George reveals his

songwriting background, his resistance to accept the fact that he is aging, and the

supportive presence of Sam in his life. More so than in most of Edward’s other comedies

including The Pink Panther series and The Party (1968), 10’s characters can get preachy

from time to time, most noticeably so when George and Sam have a lengthy discussion

about the terms “sexually-emancipated women” versus “broads” (20-25). The discussion

does not really present the viewer with any visual gags nor carry the narrative, leaving me

to believe that Edwards must have been making a statement with this discussion.

As for the gags in 10, Edwards perfectly blends visual (George’s bee sting, 15),

auditory (George’s antihistamine/ birth control comment, 16), and situational (George’s

trip to the dentist and its aftermath, 41-48). At a time when dialogue-driven romantic

comedies returned as the major subgenre of comedy—10 uses many visual gags that have

since become classics, including George spying on the neighbors (and consequently

rolling down the hill as the phone rings, 37), the old housekeeper at the church (33), the

hot sand in Mexico (1:13), and George under the effects of Novocain dribbling coffee all

over himself (42).

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By utilizing the type of gags that reference an earlier era’s approach to comedy, as

Wilder experimented with in Some Like It Hot, Edwards intentionally resists the current

trend in audience’s expectations for comedy. The “outdated” style of these gags supports

Edwards’ major theme in 10—that of aging and the feeling of being a product of a

bygone era. Much of George’s sentiments go beyond feeling old, instead more

significantly, feeling no longer part of modern times, suggesting an autobiographical

feeling by Edwards. Like Chaplin, Edwards was able to be a revolutionary artist while

making films in a rather classic style. Instead of joining his contemporaries by filling his

soundtrack with the newest disco hits, he instead uses the timeless orchestral jazz music

of Henry Mancini—who is today remembered as one of the most prolific and successful

composers in any genre.

The music alone is enough to set apart Edwards’ style, but he uses it to contrast

the pathos and comedy in his picture, a trait of Edwards that I mentioned earlier. As I

stated above, Edwards clearly understood the successful comedy’s necessity of

borrowing conventions from dramatic subgenres. As George fantasizes about he and

Jenny running towards each other in slow motion on the beach (a parody of the romance

genre), the music creates a level of euphoria, and all at once the result is something both

hilarious and deeply beautiful (1:21). Like Chaplin, Edwards has the ability to

consciously allow the dramatic conventions to overtake the comic ones—if only for a

moment. Like the final scene of City Lights (1931), Edwards’ moments of pathos never

let the viewer feel deceived—as if the film that they had perceived to be a comedy had

suddenly turned dramatic—because he never lets the viewer forget how comedy always

intertwines the dramatic and comic conventions.

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Just as Katharine Hepburn’s character of Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby

(1938) appears in repeatedly unexpected moments, George controls a series of apparent

coincidences through the Principle of Comic Timing—of course his dentist is Jenny’s

father (40), of course he vacations at the same hotel as she (54), and of course the man he

rescues is her husband (1:23). On the literal sense, George is caught between two

women—his faithful girlfriend that is his contemporary and the young blonde that is his

obsession—but he is symbolically caught between being old and living in the past and

longing to be young and to live a fantasy. He ends up being associated with the old men

standing in the surf (1:16) and with “elevator music” (1:32), but he wishes to rent a

surfboard like a young man (1:20) and take risks and live vicariously through Jenny

(1:30). George’s fantasy and resultant disappointment reveals an important truth about

the balance of fantasy and reality within comedy. While drama can present us a fantasy

world in which the viewer could actually imagine existing, comedy shatters the fantasy

by forcing us to face reality—a reality that drama dares not address. As with the greatest

comic heroes, George is so genuine; he so desperately wishes to please Sam as well as

feel young by being with Jenny. No matter how much he may want Jenny’s husband out

of the picture, he does the right thing by rescuing him—an action that ironically brings

him to Jenny’s attention (1:30).

Despite the fact that over a third of the narrative takes place in Mexico, Edwards

does not really engage ethnic stereotypes. Any moment that seems to portray a

stereotype can be justified when seen under careful examination. The hotel employees on

the beach seem desperate to please the hotel guests, to the point that they are willing to

carry patrons to the water (1:18). The attitude of the hotel employees is not mocking

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Mexicans, but the nature of anyone working in the field of hospitality anywhere in the

world. Likewise, when the hotel desk clerk believes that incommunicado is a place and

not a state of being, the misunderstanding is not meant to function as a joke about gender

or ethnicity—it is to show how humorous situations can occur when one takes vocabulary

for granted (1:24). One interesting situation on the topic of ethnicity is the fact that

George warms up to the American-born bartender, and none of the Mexican employees

(1:00). This relationship may appear to be a stereotype that an English-speaking patron

could only relate to an English-speaking bartender, but I argue that in fact, that the

filmmakers cast an American actor, not because of prejudice on their part, but because

they felt that an English-speaking viewer could relate to an English-speaking character

better.

Robert Webber’s portrayal of Hugh is one of the most sensitive portrayals of a

homosexual character in comedy. Hugh is neither flamboyant nor eccentric, he does not

cross-dress, nor does he speak with an effeminate voice. In fact, the viewer would not

know he were homosexual without his direct reference to it (8). On the other hand,

George’s derogatory slurs directed at Hugh that emphasize gay stereotypes all prove to be

inaccurate in Hugh’s case (28)—allowing Edward’s to make a statement before it was

really socially acceptable to do so, as misconceptions about homosexuals were still strong

for at least another decade, and still exist today.

One of the highest moments in the film occurs when Edwards takes advantage of

comedy’s ability to support asides, even musical ones, as perfectly acceptable and even

necessary. Near the end of the film, George abruptly halts the narrative and all the gags

to play a nearly five minute piano piece (1:25-1:30). In a demonstration of how well

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comedy allows for such an aside, the moment harkens back to the episodic format of

Vaudeville and The Marx Brothers’ pictures, reinforcing the theme of aging and longing

for an earlier time with earlier tastes. However, this musical interlude carries a greater

narrative meaning than those of the Marx Brothers: the recurring melody functions in

almost the same way as Chaplin’s leitmotivs in City Lights (1931). The musical theme

first appears after George sees Jenny for the first time (27) and develops throughout the

film. It is not until the end (1:52) that George and the viewer realize that he was really

writing the piece for Sam (revealed to be the right woman for him) and not Jenny (the

wrong woman for him). For the scene of George’s final revelation, Edwards seems to

share the knowledge of the great silent comedians,i once again, supporting his theme of

wanting to exist in an earlier era. Without any dialogue, George and Sam share their

feelings and reconcile through music and action. George does not seem surprised that

Sam has returned and the viewer knows that it will work out between them when Sam

once again joins George at the piano bench and they end the song gazing at each other.

Unlike Chaplin’s leitmotivs, this song is positioned ambiguously, as it sometimes

functions diegetically as George plays it while other times it functions non-diegetically

and accompanies the narrative. The film closes with Dudley Moore and Julie Andrews

(note, not as their characters) performing the piece together while the credits scroll. One

realizes that Henry Mancini and Blake Edwards have created a song that not only

reinforces the theme of longing for older styles, but also, in working both diegetically and

non-diegetically, allows them to take one step closer to blurring the line between art and

life.

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Reception

10 became one of the top grossing films of the year, grossing $75 million (about

$237 million in 2012 dollars). It was also Edwards’ highest grossing film in theaters, and

did very well in the newly developing home video market, marking the first case study in

which the picture was available for private viewing within a year of its release.

It is important for the reader to remember that by the time he had made 10,

Edwards already had a thirty year history of past films—some critically successful and

some not so successful. As we see in the case of other filmmakers with many successful

films, it was impossible for reviewers to approach the film without comparing it to every

previous Edwards picture. The majority of reviews at the time of its release were very

positive, with several reviewers addressing Edwards’ retrospective comic style. Richard

Schickel of Time Magazine called it “an almost perfect example of the kind of purely

visual humor of which Blake Edwards is a modern master”. Roger Ebert of the Chicago

Sun-Times remarked “What we’re struck with, in 10, is the uncanny way its humor gets

laughs by touching on emotions and yearnings that are very real for us. We identify with

the characters in this movie: Their predicaments are funny, yes—but then ours would be,

too, if they weren’t our own”, alluding to the Chaplinesque way in which Edwards is able

to bring dramatic emotion into a comedy setting. For its detractors, John Simon of The

National Review admitted that it was “The most popular film currently on our screens”

but called it “A self-indulgent film… that sacrifices comedic structure to cheap laughs

and easy pathos”, although in a negative manner, Simon does echo Ebert’s allusion to

Edwards’ similarity to Chaplin’s blending of comedy and pathos. The ‘self-indulgence’,

as Simon describes it, is the autobiographical element of the picture that I mentioned

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earlier. Jay Scott of the Globe and Mail absolutely hated it, titling his review “Blake

Edwards’ 10 rates about a zero”, in which he criticizes the performances of nearly every

cast member, especially those of Moore and Andrews. I can only infer that Scott’s

review reads like it came from someone who had already decided that he was going to

hate the picture before even going to see it. For a critic that claimed the picture had no

merit, he manages to describe it in great detail—as if he had viewed the film looking for

specific points to discount.

Recent reviews of the film are still majority positive. Most reviewers focus on the

picture’s longevity and continued relevancy, also noting its impact on American culture.

In 2010, Michael O’Rourke of the San Antonio Express-News stated “All these years

later, I still consider 10 a 10….10 is still funny. 10 is still sexy”, note how the terms

“funny” and “sexy” are also used to describe Some Like It Hot. In 2011, Todd Gilchrist

of Cinematical praised the character of Hugh saying, “the film offers one of the most

complex and complimentary portrayals of a homosexual character in a mainstream

Hollywood movie, not just for that era but really for any era”. As I said above, the

character of Hugh demonstrates how well comedy is able to present The Other—and

present him as a protagonist. Gilchrist also adds that the film “holds up in an important

way that the filmmaker may or may not have intended: namely, to provide a mirror for

[today’s] baby boomers who are eager to participate in youth culture but cannot fully

embrace or accept that culture’s values”, referring to the theme that I have been stressing

throughout this case study. Gilchrist argues that this theme is still relevant to modern

audiences. While Lou Carlozo of the Chicago Tribune liked the film, he admitted that “It

lacks the spunk of Edwards’ Pink Panther films”, but he contends that it was a culturally

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influential film. John J. Puccio of Movie Metropolis found the film passable, but said that

he had a hard time sympathizing with George, whom he found to be inherently selfish.

Puccio does not consider that, as a comic hero, George’s flaw of selfishness brings the

viewers’ attention to the potential of that flaw as universal. The only completely negative

recent review that I found comes from Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com, who dubbed it

“An absurd and hopelessly dated bit of slapstick…. Blake Edwards made worse films

than this, but his comic timing is all wrong, exiled to long bouts of non-sequitur gags”.

Out of this short statement, we can extract a lot of information. Notice how he focuses

on the retrospective style of Edwards’ humor, but does not acknowledge that it is

purposefully dated. Assuming that Null uses the term “non-sequitur” to refer to the fact

that the gags do not go with the narrative, it is clear that he does not understand that gags

are historically separate from the narrative. The gags in this film in particular reveal

George’s character so well that they serve a clear purpose of their own without needing to

help the narrative. Also, in the world of film comedy, his use of the term “absurd” may

be a compliment. Nearly every reviewer seems to focus on one of two things, Edwards’

particular quality of gags or how he crafts a narrative that incorporates non-comic

conventions. When writing about Edwards and the narrative that he crafts, reviewers use

terms like “perfect”, “master”, “structure”, “pathos”, “sexy”, “complex”,

“complimentary”, and “non-sequitur”. The manner in which the reviewers describe the

comic moments range from the vague “humor”, “laughs”, and “funny” to the more

specific “purely visual”, “spunk”, “absurd”, “slapstick”, “gags”, and “comic timing”.

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Legacy

10 made Dudley Moore and Bo Derek stars and proved that Edwards was still a

strong contender in the film industry as he entered the fourth decade of his career. The

film was very culturally influential as well. It not only influenced future comedies, but

aspects of culture distantly related to comedy—if at all. For example, Bo Derek’s

cornrows hairstyle became popular among young women, the idea of rating members of

the opposite sex on a scale of 1 to 10 also became (and remains) quite common, and

Ravel’s Bolero became popular, even among non-classical music fans:

Entirely thanks to this movie, Ravel’s “Bolero” is, to this day, one of the most

expensive songs for which to obtain usage rights for film and TV (in excess of

$25,000) and, according to SACEM (the French equivalent of ASCAP), Ravel’s

estate earns more royalties than any other French composer (IMDb).

In 1984, Derek appeared in the film Bolero (John Derek), its title homage to the piece in

10 (TCM). It seems that 10 resonates most strongly with the people who saw it when it

was first released. Unfortunately, most members of my generation have never discovered

10, and therefore are blindly unaware that when Pamela Anderson ran along the beach in

“Baywatch”, she was doing nothing more than copying Bo Derek. Beyond what I have

already mentioned, I feel that 10 is still a significant picture because it proves that

comedy can have deep moral lessons—those of aging, nostalgia and fidelity—and that

gags can serve to demonstrate the personality of a character.

Recall how for several of our earlier case studies, the critics did not seem to

acknowledge the deeper themes of the films until we got to reviews published beginning

in the 1970s. Without going into detail, an interest in film studies and film criticism

became quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing for an atmosphere of theorization

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from many different approaches. The result was that earlier films as well as

contemporary ones were reexamined and reevaluated. As 10 premiered during this

expansion of film criticism, the reviewers had already become used to searching for the

deeper issues and themes within a film. From this background, we see that the reviewers

at the time of 10’s release discuss Edwards’ theme of aging and nostalgia. Of the ten film

case studies profiled in this study, 10 was released closest to my cut off date of 1980.

From 1931’s City Lights to 1979’s 10, we see a general change in the focus of critics:

later critics are more willing to focus on the deeper themes within a film.

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Case Study #10: Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (Nicholas Webster 1964)

“And Mrs. Claus has positively identified the kidnappers

as Martians” (Don Blair, as TV Announcer)

Context

To heighten how film comedies succeed, I shall identify the three major causes

for a comedy film to fail critically, and sometimes commercially as well. Explaining how

poor comedies impact the critical and popular view of film comedy and why it is so

important that critics and scholars understand these causes will help us to develop a well-

informed, relative canon of quality comedy films. Please note that these three causes are

not exclusive; it is quite possible that a particular poor comedy may fall under more than

one cause.

The first major cause of an unsuccessful comedy is a preposterous scenario. If the

premise of the film is too far removed from reality, the viewer cannot relate to it well

enough in order to find it amusing. I would like to present the reader with several

examples of comedies with preposterous scenarios: in Jean Yarbrough’s Hillbillys in a

Haunted House (1967), a group of country singers decide to spend the night in what

appears to be a vacant mansion. Of course, the mansion is not really vacant and the

haunted house is actually a front for an evil organization of spies. In Milton Moses

Ginsberg’s The Werewolf of Washington (1973), one of the top aides to the President of

the United States travels abroad and a werewolf bites him. As expected, the moon

becomes full and he turns into a werewolf at the most inopportune times—like during an

international peace summit. In Bert I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants (1965), a group of

teenagers discover a magic growth potion. Once several of the teenagers become giants,

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they decide to spend excruciating long periods of time dancing to beach party music. I

cannot say much about John De Bello’s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) that the title

does not describe already. The reader should note that Santa Claus Conquers The

Martians fits under this first cause of unsuccessful comedy as well.

The second cause of an unsuccessful comedy is an attempt to nearly imitate the

styles of successful comedies or of successful comic performers, which can only result in

just a poor copy. Instead of finding their own original style, these performers can do

nothing but disappoint us and make us want to see the actual performer that they imitate

even more. In William Beaudine’s Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), the two

lead performers Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo try to imitate Dean Martin and Jerry

Lewis (discussed in more detail later). Duke Mitchell does not sing as well as Dean

Martin and Sammy Petrillo is not as funny as Jerry Lewis, but somehow the filmmakers

thought they could lull audiences into believing that they were watching Martin and

Lewis. It did not work. Allan Dwan’s The Gorilla (1939) features the three Ritz

Brothers, who imitate The Three Stooges. Literally every gag in the picture is a recycled

Three Stooges gag. The result of the imitations in both pictures is that the viewer feels

cheated. One will also note that both these films could also fit in the first category of

preposterous scenarios. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians also features a poor

imitation, as the reader will shortly see, reminding the reader that a poor comedy can

follow more than one cause of unsuccessful comedy.

As may be the case for many dramatic films failing, the third cause of an

unsuccessful film comedy is the spawning of too many sequels. Often a comedy series

finds a formula that works quite well, and for more than one picture. But at some point,

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the formula simply becomes old and tired; few filmmakers at this point seem to recognize

when it is time to throw in the towel. In 1949, The Marx Brothers starred in Love Happy

(David Miller), their last and worst-reviewed film. It was their thirteenth feature film

(IMDb). Before he brought the world Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), Jean

Yarbrough worked with Abbott and Costello on Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), their

twenty-ninth feature film (IMDb), that is considered by most film reviewers to be their

worst. But apparently some people never learn, as the duo went on to make seven more

feature films together. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were one of the most popular

comedy teams of the 1950s and influenced other comedians, as mentioned above. The

duo starred in sixteen feature films together (IMDb). Their penultimate attempt,

Pardners (Norman Taurog 1956), a Western spoof, is considered by most critics to be

their worst. They made one more picture together before attempting various solo

ventures. Two other big names in the entertainment business, Bob Hope and Bing

Crosby starred in a series of comedies from the early 1940s through the early 1950s, now

know as the Road series because each title began with “Road to…”. Their last picture

Road To Hong Kong (Norman Panama 1962) came ten years after the previous

installment in the series (IMDb). Most critics agree that the series should have ended

with the previous film in 1952. The reader may have noticed that several of the comedy

teams listed under this third cause of unsuccessful comedy specialized in musical

comedies, however, I feel that the particular sequels that I have cited above fall into the

category of comedy films with musical interludes and fit within the parameters of my

study. In England, a series of comedies, known as the Carry On series because of its

similar title scheme to the Road series, were highly popular for quite a few years. The

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series consisted of thirty-one pictures released from 1958-1978, with one additional

picture appearing in 1992. Film reviewers contend that Carry On England (Gerald

Thomas 1976), the twenty-eighth installment in the series is the worst. The only way I

can describe the picture is that it feels like the writers simply ran out of ideas. The whole

thing feels worn out and all the gags fail—they are just not funny. As I said above, each

one of these series began as a great idea, but once studios recognize it as a successful

formula, they wish to capitalize on the financial prospects alone, ultimately ringing the

series dry.

Production

Producer Paul L. Jacobson came from a television background. Most notably, he

worked on the popular “Howdy Doody” television show (Miller). Santa Claus Conquers

The Martians “was a first-and-only picture by a would-be producer trying to break in to

the potentially lucrative market of children’s films” (Miller). Apparently, the idea for the

narrative was an original inspiration of Jacobson. Director Nicholas Webster had little

experience directing. As critic Samantha Miller describes it:

As an all-ages film, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians faces a basic problem:

the combined experience of the producer (working on his first and only film), the

director (who had previously only filmed a stage play), and the actors (most of

whom had primarily stage experience) could not serve up a suitably compelling

cinematic experience, and even a matinee audience of kids deserves to see

something cinematic rather than stiff and stagey, particularly when the genre is

science fiction and fantasy (Miller).

As Miller noted above, most of the performers came from various stage productions in

the New York City area. John Call who plays Santa Claus had a small part in the musical

Oliver!, while Bill McCutcheon, who plays Dropo, had some experience in children’s

television (Miller). The performer that most people talk about today is Pia Zadora

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(Girmar, the little Martian girl), who went on to appear in many more B-movies and

became somewhat of a cult icon and sex symbol. According to the Internet Movie

Database, “Most of the film was shot in an abandoned aircraft hangar on Long Island,

New York”. The Martian ray guns that look like hair dryers were apparently “painted

Whammo Air Blasters” (Miller). Eventually, Embassy Pictures agreed to distribute the

film (Miller). Besides these effects of its limited budget, the telltale sign of an

inexperienced or perhaps oblivious filmmaker is the fact that actors mess up their lines

and acknowledge it in their faces—something that would clearly indicate an additional

take is needed, yet a filmmaker like Webster still found the performance passable and

thereby made it so that the finished product could be nothing more than merely passable.

The reader also should consider how the producer, director, and performers’ lack of

experience with the medium of film highlights not only how different stage or (the then-

young medium of) television presentation differs from film, but also how one must

present the comedy differently as well.

The Film

Just from the opening title, the viewer approaches Santa Claus Conquers The

Martians expecting to laugh—but a laugh at the expense of everything that the

filmmakers did not expect to elicit laughter. The filmmakers clearly target their young

viewers by not only having the theme song “Hooray For Santy Claus” (0-2) performed

solely by children, but also by introducing us to our protagonist through the aid of

KIDTV (2). The first verbal gags in the movie are nothing but pathetic as Andy

Henderson, reporter for KIDTV, delivers a slew of cold jokes in reference to the North

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Pole. At 4 minutes in, the viewer is introduced to Mrs. Claus, who fills the stereotype of

nagging wife (see Chapter II). She is so annoying to Santa (and to the viewer) that when

she gets stunned by the Martians, Santa remarks “I can’t recall a time when you were so

silent for so long” (39), a remark that Groucho Marx, who would have been quite familiar

to the filmmakers due to his television work, might have made had he and Margaret

Dumont played Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Once the narrative shifts to Mars, the quality seems to go even further downhill.

The names of the Martian family, Kimar, Momar, Bomar, and Girmar almost seem as if

the filmmakers took the words ‘king’, ‘mom’, ‘boy’, and ‘girl’ and simply put a ‘-mar’ on

the end to create exotic names. Another equally uncreative name is for a Martian month,

Septober (12), which sounds quite similar to what would occur if one combined the

words September and October! The character Dropo’s name (6), sounds like a clown’s

name—or perhaps the name of a long-lost Marx Brother. Perhaps, using a clown name

was the filmmakers’ way of indicating that the viewer should find Dropo funny, the type

of gimmick that Howard Hawks warned against in comedy filmmaking (see Chapter 3.4)

However, Dropo is not funny; he is annoying. His verbal gags do not even make sense,

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I forgot how. So I was just practicing!” (7). Santa,

on the other hand, is a true comic hero, exemplifying the quality of absentmindedness

straight from the Principle of Comic Sense, as he only realizes the true nature of his

predicament once he has arrived on Mars and the Martians explain that he will never

return to Earth (57), to which he exclaims “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, as if to say “is that so?”.

I feel that one of worst flaws of this picture is that the performers try so hard—far

too hard. Kimar (Leonard Hicks), the Martian leader is so serious (except for two brief

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moments: when he smiles [1:00] and when he laughs [1:17]) and seems to be chronically

miffed. The character Chochum (Carl Don, 12), the ancient seer, is so outrageously frail

that the scene becomes a farce, when the filmmakers did not intend it to be. Donna

Conforti’s performance as Betty may be one of the worst in film history. Judging by her

age, I would assume that she was unable to read her lines, but she recites every line at

such an unnatural pace that it seems like she is reading each one. On top of that, most of

what Betty says is a complaint and a major understatement. For example, she states, “I’m

cold” (32) as she wanders around the North Pole in a skirt. Santa Claus Conquers The

Martians follows the old B-Movie trick of liberal use of stock footage, a practice I noted

in my analysis of Duck Soup. The footage shows the military pursuing the Martians at

four separate cutaways (18, 22, 25, 41), sometimes even repeating the same footage!

As all comedy borrows the conventions of other genres, the best of low-budget

Science Fiction appears in the sequence at the North Pole when the Martians arrive to

capture Santa (30-40). I find it absolutely hilarious, but I have never been able to tell if

the filmmakers had intended it to be so. The biggest issue that I have with this sequence

is that the Martians are too serious about capturing Santa (30). They want to be sure that

the operation is covert and efficient. But unlike the serious nature of Buster Keaton, for

example, who used his straight face for comic effect, it is never clear if the performers are

acting in the same manner, or if they truly believe that the idea of kidnapping Santa is a

somber situation. Beyond the performances are still more borrowed conventions from

Science Fiction. For example, a picture of this caliber could not show the North Pole

without including at least one polar bear (33). However, this polar bear is obviously a

performer crawling on all fours, with a white shag rug draped over him, and with a

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disproportionately large head. Unfortunately, Billy and Betty’s troubles are not over

once they escape from the polar bear, because they run into the Martian’s robot, Torg

(35). Torg is quite possibly the finest amalgamation of cardboard boxes, PVC piping,

and Duct Tape ever assembled. The fact that the Martians have to repeatedly yell every

voice command for Torg makes the situation that much more entertaining. The most

ridiculous part of the entire picture is when the Martians storm Santa’s workshop and tell

him to “come along quietly” (39), as if they expected anything else from him. Displaying

the Principle of Comic Sense, Santa appears quite naïve and seems to welcome the

Martians’ invitation to travel to Mars. Once Santa is captured, the NASA consultant that

appears on the television fills every stereotype of the Wernher von Braun-type German

émigré scientist of the space age.

Two scenes in this picture are in the style of popular television comedy of the

time. First, when Kimar and the evil Voldar (Vincent Beck) fight (49), it is so similar in

style to the campy “Batman” television series from later that decade, that very much

followed the style of the comic books and pop art of the period. However it is important

to note that the basic idea of camp—a specific quality of humor that I do not have the

space to describe in detail—is that it is made to appear sloppy. With this picture

however, I do not believe this result is intentional. In a similar scene, when Santa and the

children arrive on the control deck (55), the gentle, music box sounding music is very

reminiscent to that of the “Shari Lewis Show”, which premiered in 1960, and that of “Mr.

Rogers’ Neighborhood”, which would premiere later in the decade.

As I stated above, the true low-quality of the filmmaking appears in the failed

verbal interactions between characters. Some of the greatest of these verbal interactions

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occur between the Earth children and the Martian parents—especially when the children

clearly mess up lines and the adult actors struggle to continue with their own lines (1:01).

When Voldar and his two ignorant henchmen break into Santa’s workshop on Mars

(1:04), it is an imitation of the Three Stooges—an imitation that is characteristic of poor

comedies, as I stated above. The ending is quite fulfilling, as Voldar ends up crying

when the children outwit him (1:16). In a circular fashion, the picture ends with Santa

and the children returning to Earth, and the viewer hears the joyous strains of “Hooray

For Santy Claus” once more (1:18).

Reception

The filmmakers and distributors attempted to market the film specifically to

children, but even with that the film failed at the box office (Miller). Despite its notorious

reputation, not all the reviews of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians were poor. It is

important to realize, however, that these positive reviews illuminate a common

assumption among critics—that a poor comedy picture is acceptable as long as the

intended audience is children, an opinion which I personally cannot understand. Howard

Thompson of the New York Times found the film to be “aimed straight at the very small

fry, who probably will eat it up”, and considered it to be passable for a children’s movie,

but he adds:

Mr. Jacobson’s economical production and Nicholas Webster’s direction, not to

mention the very broad acting, make the picture seem like a children’s television

show enlarged on movie house screens.”All this trouble for a fat man in a red

suit,” growls one Martian, and a couple more lines like this might have wrecked

the picture.

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Boxoffice Magazine echoed Thompson and said that “The small town and neighborhood

exhibitors’ cry that few pictures are being made for youthful audiences is answered by”

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. The reviewer adds “the picture will have strong

appeal to the tots and the younger teenagers although a lobby sign with ‘No One

Admitted OVER 16 Years of Age” might be appropriate, for most adult patrons are likely

to find it overly saccharine and nonsensical”. Notice how apologetic both reviews are for

the picture, especially noticeable when Thompson uses the sensitive term “economical”

instead of a more overt term like “cheap” or “low-budget”. What bothers me the most

about these critics’ assumptions is that they clearly feel that children are too ignorant to

know when something is not deserving of their attention. To refute their claim, I would

like to present the fact that some of the most successful “children’s” pictures are the

animated Disney features and the live-action Muppet pictures, which adults are still able

to revisit and appreciate decades after they first saw them as a child—and perhaps

sometimes appreciate them more. It may be that the critics’ shortcomings in their ability

to approach comedy are related to their inability to gauge what makes a quality picture

for children.

What is most interesting is that recent reviews do not focus on it as a children’s

picture, but as the cult classic that it has become. The most positive review from recent

years that I could find, written by Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid, gave

the picture 3 out of 4 stars, mostly for its nostalgia value:

What holiday would be complete without it? This bad sci-fi classic—complete

with little Pia Zadora as Girmar the Martian and a cheesy holiday song (“Hooray

for Santy Claus!”)—is currently available (appropriately) on several budget

DVDs.

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His statement brings attention to the impact of the affordable home video on these low-

quality comedies for which one would not want to spend much. In 2000, Nick Cramp of

the BBC said, “Some films are merely bad. Others are enjoyably bad. Some films are so

bad that watching them is physically painful. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is one

such special case”. He elaborates on this statement, “The plot, such as it is, proves it is

possible to insult the intelligence of a three-year-old…. Scripting, acting, production

values, and plot are universally risible”, supporting the argument about children’s

pictures that I made above. Py Thomas of eFilmCritic.Com commented “I guess it

seemed like a good idea at the time” but adds that the picture “is a fruitcake of a stinker”.

Notice the particular vocabulary that he uses, “fruitcake” and “stinker”, and how it

becomes part of a specific critical language for the criticism of poor comedy. Jake Euker

of Filmcritic.com said “The fact is that Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is just too

stupid—not stupid in the Ed Wood way, but exasperatingly, tediously stupid—to view in

a single sitting”. He sums up the critical consensus quite well:

The plot is deadly, but it’s the filmmaking that really eviscerates Santa Claus

Conquers the Martians. It’s shot in that hopeless, bad filmmaking style in which

nothing flows naturally or at any time feels organic or unplanned. In Santa Claus

Conquers the Martians, characters walk into scenes and stand, deliver their lines,

wait, and then exit or maybe give another line. While not speaking they stand

stock still or woodenly ‘interact,’ and conversations are punctuated by little

pauses between speech that give the action the delayed, artificial rhythm of a

trans-Atlantic phone call.

In 2011, Anthony De Valle of the Las Vegas Review-Journal mentioned a local stage

adaption of the picture and stated “The 1964 Grade Z movie… is ripe for parody, in an

Ed Wood sort of way”, alluding to the same situation that Mel Brook’s faced with Young

Frankenstein (1974) when he parodied the original Universal series that was humorous in

its own right.

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Legacy

As I mentioned above, producer Jacobson (fortunately) never again tried his hand

at a motion picture. Director Webster however went on to direct several more science

fiction pictures throughout the next decade (Miller). Earlier that year, Stanley Kubrick

used some of the same stock footage for the opening titles of Dr. Strangelove (IMDb),

which is most likely a coincidence from using the same stock footage library. A recent

poll on ticket site Fandango.com revealed that its customers consider Santa Claus

Conquers The Martians to be the worst Christmas movie of all time (Chicago Tribune).

The film has the dubious honor (?) of appearing not only in Harry Medved and Randy

Dreyfuss’ The 50 Worst Films of All Time, but also in “Golden Raspberry Award founder

John Wilson’s book THE OFFICIAL RAZZIE® MOVIE GUIDE” (IMDb). The picture

went from a box office bomb to B-movie classic due to several reasons, all closely related

to the developing popularity of camp humor in the late 1960s that I addressed above.

Although a cousin of parody—the comic style of camp is comparable—camp does not

require an original source to mock nor rely on the viewer’s knowledge of that which is

mocked.

The first reason for Santa Claus Conquers The Martians’ rise to popular and

critical attention is that cinema owners began to show it on an annual basis during the

holiday season. Second, television stations began showing it regularly. Third, and

perhaps most significantly, the popular television program “Mystery Science Theater

3000” featured it in an episode and brought attention to the film into the mainstream

media. Many other cult television shows followed suit. Recently, the picture “fell into

the Public Domain” (Miller), making it affordable for television stations and cinemas to

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present it, for DVD manufacturers to distribute it, and for fans to share it online. In

2011, USA Today columnist Susan Wloszcyna wrote about the many bad portrayals of

Santa Claus in motion pictures and considered this particular one to be the worst,

“movies have few compelling portraits in red felt. The big guy even suffers the indignity

of being upstaged by a young Pia Zadora in that nutty slice of outer-space fruitcake”, note

that she uses the same “fruitcake” term that Py Thomas of eFilmCritic.com used above.

Recently, Entertainment Weekly called it “The best bad movie Ed Wood never directed,

this antidote to all those Xmas classics clogging up the schedule is as stinky as they say,

down to and including the insane theme song”. No matter how low-caliber this picture

may be, no one can argue that it is not highly entertaining from beginning to end.

To examine the reviewers’ foci and how they describe their foci, we find two

themes—completely based on when the reviews were written. The earliest reviews

simply find it forgivable because it had been marketed for children (“very small fry” and

“tots”), describing it in apologetic terms like “economical” and “broad acting”. The

reviews from more recent years all focus on the film as a cult classic that is enjoyable

simply because it is so bad. Out of these recent reviews, we see the clear emergence of

the vocabulary used by reviewers, both professional and amateur, that have become part

of the trend of reviewing poor films, a trend that has spread rapidly since the accessibility

of the internet made it possible for worldwide communities of these reviewers to form.

Among these terms are “bad sci-fi classic”, “cheesy”, “physically painful”, “risible”,

“fruitcake”, “stinker”, “stupid”, “deadly” “ripe for parody”, “exasperating”, “hopeless”,

“tedious”, “woodenly”, and “bad”. We see the terms in these reviews could apply to bad

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dramas as well as to bad comedies, not really giving us any specific insight into the

quality of the comedy.

Poor comedies, like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and the others profiled

in this section have a greater impact on the esteem of film comedy in general than one

would think. As I said in the section about sequels, filmmakers and distributors will keep

producing comedies of little aesthetic value, as long as the products turn out to be

profitable. The result is of course, that for every one excellent example of film comedy,

we may find nine poor examples. Of course, every genre from Western to Science

Fiction has its high points and low points, but bad comedies seem to remain in the

viewer’s mind much longer than a bad drama, because of the effects of the memorable

flaws of preposterous scenarios, imitations of A-list comedians or comic styles, and too

many sequels. Consider how these three flaws almost go against the Principles of Comic

Effect and the common conventions that we have found throughout many film comedies.

A preposterous scenario never demonstrates the narrative/ gag balance necessary in a

quality comedy because the entire narrative seems to be a gag. The imitation of familiar

comic performers leaves no room for the Principle of Comic Timing, because there is no

element of the surprise—nothing that the comic performers do is unexpected—in fact, it

is all quite predictable. The same is true for the existence of too many sequels; the Comic

Timing is lost because the viewer can predict everything that can unfold within the tired

formula.

A fourth and final reason why bad comedies seem to have much more of a

cultural and critical impact than a bad drama is the fact that a lack of pathos in a tragedy

can be forgivable, while a lack of comic moments in a comedy cannot be so. Often in a

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tragedy, the flow of the narrative is the primary element, and beyond that, many scholars

still debate what Aristotle considered to be necessary pathos when he stated that a tragedy

required pathos (Rees 2). Because of these facts, I argue that one would not detest a

tragedy that does not make one cry as much as one would detest a comedy that does not

make one laugh. Consider that a viewer may be willing to sit through a poor drama,

assuming that there must be something that she or he simply does not comprehend, or

perhaps the drama may have an interesting narrative without causing a release of

emotions. Laughter, on the other hand, is a natural instinct, and does not need a narrative

to prepare it. One immediately feels the emotional disappointment of going to a comedy

as soon as she or he does not laugh, and no one wants to experience this disappointment.

It is the wish to avoid this uncomfortable emotional disappointment that contributes to

viewers and critics’ wishes to avoid comedy. The emotional impact of suffering through a

poorly constructed comedy is so memorable that many critics and viewers have an

inherent aversion to comedy of any caliber of which they are not even aware.

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Why Is There No Woody Allen Case Study?

At some point during the course of this thesis, the reader might have wondered

why I have not chosen a Woody Allen comedy as a case study. I admit that many film

historians declare him to be one of the greatest comic filmmakers of the late Twentieth

Century. I acknowledge that he has had several critical and commercial successes in the

field of comedy. However, I also argue that the statements that some scholars make

about his work are not entirely accurate. In my research, I have encountered the same

argument from several scholars, which is that Allen validated film comedy when he won

the Best Directing and Best Picture Academy Awards for Annie Hall (1977). While, as I

have shown in this study, it is quite rare for a comedy to win an Academy Award, to

describe it as a singular achievement for film comedy ignores so many of the comic

filmmakers that preceded him and influenced him.

Consider the two films that film historians contend are his most significant, Annie

Hall (1977), followed by Manhattan (1979), “Allen’s most commercially and critically

acclaimed film” (Dixon and Foster 360). Film scholar Virginia Wexman describes Annie

Hall (1977) as containing “a highly personal brand of humor” (339), which characterizes

how I approach it as well. Personally, I see Manhattan (1979) as Annie Hall: Part II.

Diane Keaton seems to play more or less the same quirky, risk-taking character and in

both films, Woody Allen plays Woody Allen: an odd-looking, neurotic, middle-aged,

fatalistic, depressed, Jewish man living in New York City. Besides the obvious color to

black and white cinematography difference, I cannot see any evidence of artistic growth

or experimentation between these two films that one would expect to see from someone

who is so praised by scholars.

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As for Annie Hall (1977), I can appreciate the quality of the sharp (albeit morbid)

writing, that the role of Annie Hall is the definitive role of Keaton’s career, and Allen’s

distinctive worldview. Still, I cannot understand how the film was awarded Best Picture

and Best Directing. Granted, the 50

th

Academy Awards were held twelve years before I

was born, but from my perspective nearly 35 years after, I cannot see how Allen’s picture

received Best Picture, when Star Wars (George Lucas) did not. Personal tastes aside,

Star Wars literally made the Science Fiction subgenre a legitimate, A-list attraction that

now had the potential to earn critical recognition, and it helped to define the Blockbuster

as we know it today (whether a good or bad phenomenon, it is culturally significant).

What confuses me further is how Allen received Best Directing not only over George

Lucas, but also over Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind—one of his

top five most critically acclaimed films [Rottentomatoes.com])—who is perhaps the most

critically acclaimed director of the past four decades.

I think the biggest issue that I have with both Annie Hall and Manhattan is the

fact that Allen’s characters do not fit the role of comic heroes very well. The great comic

heroes, many of which I profile in this study, are genuine, relatable, and fill the viewer

with hope—as they have clear flaws, yet they continue to exist with a sense of joy despite

their shortcomings. Alvy Singer or Isaac Davis, as the case may be, is a complainer. As

I stated above, he is so specific to Woody Allen that it is very difficult for most viewers

to relate to him. Instead of celebrating his flaws, as the true comic hero does, he portrays

a sense of fatalistic, learned helplessness and complains about everything. By the time

Annie Hall leaves him, it is difficult for the viewer to empathize with him—on the

contrary, we wish that we could leave him too.

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The final point that I would like to make concerning Woody Allen is the

phenomenon of his generation-specific audience. He became popular with my parents’

generation, the Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) in the early 1970s. However, his

attempt to channel Bergman and his bizarre personal life caused his audience to drop off

considerably in the 1980s. Today, it is impossible for Baby Boomers to think of Woody

Allen without considering his personal life. Manhattan (1979), in which forty-something

Isaac Davis dates an eighteen-year old girl, is as much a terrifying foreshadowing of

Allen’s future, as it is a comedy. With his popularity fading in the 1980s and with the

audience made of Baby Boomers turning away from him, my generation (born mid 1980s

to late 1990s) never encountered Woody Allen’s pictures. The result of this situation in

the critical world is that the vast majority of scholars who highly praise Woody Allen

today are Baby Boomers who saw his 1970s films when they first premiered, and as

scholars, are more equipped to look beyond the stigma of his personal life. This lack of

longevity in the critical and commercial impact of Allen’s films is in contrast to the other

films that I have included as case studies. It is for the combination of all the reasons

stated above that I have refrained from including any Woody Allen picture as a case

study.

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IV. DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION

“One excellent test of the civilization of a country… I take to be the

flourishing of the comic idea and comedy” (Meredith 47)

Before I present my conclusion, I wish to address the major points of film comedy

that scholars discuss, adding to this list of commonalities that I originally presented in

Chapter I: comedy goes against established film conventions, comedy is a struggle

between limiters and disruptions, comedy is a necessary part of humanity, and that a true

film comedy contains visual and auditory gags, as well as comic situations. After I have

identified the additional recurring threads, I shall address two arguments that I have

encountered from scholars as to why they believe film comedy is critically

underappreciated. Each thread presents a reason why critics and scholars have such a

difficult time approaching comedy. The reader should also remember what I stated in the

last case study, that poor examples of film comedy help to make all film comedy appear

unappealing to film reviewers and audiences. Through following the Four Principles of

Comic Effect, first defined in Chapter I and acknowledging the common threads that

recur across comedies, one can begin to construct a critical sense of and a critical

language for the use of discussing film comedy.

Gags vs. Narrative

One common discussion across a lot of research into comedy is the relationship

between the narrative and the gag, “Most work on gags… suggests a fundamental tension

within most comic texts between our interest in narrative and our interest in gags and

humor” (Karnick and Jenkins 79). When analyzing comedy, film scholar Don Crafton

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sees gags as things that “disrupt an original stasis while the narrative seeks to contain and

limit the disruption in order to regain the original equilibrium” (82), while film scholar

Tom Gunning disagrees, arguing that gags are “what set the narrative into motion and

what delay its potential resolution” (Karnick and Jenkins 82). Note that film scholars

Kristine Karnick and Henry Jenkins use the term “potential resolution” (italics mine),

indicating as I have said in Chapter III, that a comic narrative does not require a

resolution as a dramatic one would. The comic filmmaker may choose to emphasize gags

over the narrative, as film scholar Henry Jenkins explains, “Gags, unlike other narrative

details, are never invisible, never function quietly, but always demand our attention, even

at the expense of other aspects of narrative comprehension” (85) and it is this overt

presentation of gags that makes a film a comedy, for as I have said before, a comic film

requires visual and verbal gags.

The simplified manner of classification, to approach narrative as plot and gag as

interruption, ignores the intricacies of both. Just as the working definition of comedy

follows the Principles of Comic Effect, and not an overall scheme or structure, “There

can be no concrete definition of a gag because it is marked by affective response, not set

forms or clear logic…. The gag may also contain its own microscopic narrative system

that may be irrelevant to the larger narrative, may mirror it, or may even work against it

as parody” (Crafton 109). I agree with the view of many scholars that the gag/narrative

relationship is a symbiotic one. The narrative serves to present the gags, just as the gags

serve to convey the comic heroes, “gags become absorbed into the narrative economy of

most films, marking perhaps an excess, but an excess that is necessary to the film’s

process of containment” (Gunning “Pie and Chase” 121). Earlier in his discussion film

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comedy, Gunning describes a gag as “an elementary building block of narrative, one

which could be expanded, and therefore a direct ancestor of later classical narrative film”

(“Crazy Machines” 95) that may be “intricately worked into comic personas (as in films

of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and later Jerry Lewis)” (97). Just looking at two of the

preceding case studies, City Lights (1931) and 10 (1979), we see that the gags serve to

establish the personality and motivations of the comic heroes, The Little Tramp and

George Webber.

Many film scholars have written about comedy as a delicate balance between the

urge to break out of the narrative and the forces that seek to limit and to contain the gags

within the narrative:

One way to look at narrative is to see it as a system for providing the spectator

with sufficient knowledge to make casual links between represented events.

According to this view, the gag’s status as an irreconcilable difference becomes

clear. Rather than providing knowledge, slapstick misdirects the viewer’s

attention, and obfuscates the linearity of cause-effect relations. Gags provide the

opposite of epistememological comprehension by the spectator. They are

atemporal bursts of violence and/or hedonism that are as ephemeral and as

gratifying as the sight of someone’s pie-smitten face (Crafton 119).

No medium works so well to demonstrate the contrast between gag and narrative than

film. No other art form has the ability to capture an aside to the extent that film does, for

only with film, can the audience’s orientation to the subject literally change. Through the

use of camera angle changes, cut-ins, and cut-aways, a filmmaker can bring the viewer to

a totally unrelated shot.

Many such scholars believe that this conflict between gag and narrative is one of

the leading causes for critics’ difficulty in approaching comedy, “It may be that the

tendency to suppress the antinarrative elements of film history results from a hasty

overclassicism of actual Hollywood output” (Crafton 119). CraftonF adds that when film

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comedy became codified in the form of silent comedy, “spectacle ‘attraction’ was the

primary characteristic; narrative was greatly diminished, if present at all” (119). A film

reviewer that looks for a tight narrative, free of excess, as a sign of a quality film, will not

be able to find that a comedy film follows that expectation. Likewise, closure at the end

of the narrative or a clear change in the protagonists or in their situation is possible, yet

not necessary in a comedy as it is in a non-comic narrative. City Lights (1931) ends in

ambiguity, The Ladykillers (1955) ends as it begins, and the protagonists of Some Like It

Hot (1959) remain unchanged. In order to properly analyze a comedy, one must not

focus on either the narrative or the gags, but rather how the relationship between them

functions in the film.

Comedy and Taboo

Film comedy’s ability to challenge established conventions of filmmaking

parallels its principle to go against the conventions of proper society and social

interaction, “comedy’s antiauthoritarianism… breaks taboos and expresses those

impulses which are always outside social norms” (Rowe 43). This exploration into taboo

subjects sometimes comes in expressions of The Seven Deadly Sins, not to promote

them, but to acknowledge that every person is equally vulnerable to these forbidden

desires. Comedy not only addresses these certain socio-cultural taboo, it embraces them.

Freud argued that comedy is so appealing for this reason:

comedy is a process of safeguarding pleasure against the denials of reason, which

is wary of pleasure. Man cannot live by reason alone or forever under the rod of

moral obligation…. From its earliest days comedy is an essential pleasure

mechanism valuable to the spectator and the society in which he lives. Comedy is

a momentary and publicly useful resistance to authority and an escape from its

pressures (Sypher 241-242).

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Freud also suggested “a person telling a joke which takes as its butt an individual or

human type is expressing aggression towards that individual or group in a socially

acceptable form” (Curry 228). Comedy allows the performer to express what the viewer

may personally feel, but dare not say out loud. A critic particularly faces difficulty when

trying to determine if a comedy film is socially and culturally significant when the

comedy not only purposefully goes against the conventions of filmmaking but also the

conventions of society. Also, if the critic fails to recognize the semiological codes, or

symbols, with which the comedy expresses taboo, she will not be able to properly analyze

their import to the nature of the film and to the film’s cultural and historical significance.

Women, Minorities, and Identity

By opening up taboo, comedy has the ability to liberate. For the first half of the

Twentieth Century, issues of identity—gender roles, ethnicity, and sexuality—appeared

openly in the genre of comedy. Only by the 1960s, did these topics appear in non-comic

pictures, but the comic sense of shock and voyeurism was never lost.

Out of every film genre, women performers and characters found their greatest

prominence in the realm of comedy, but not until the sound film. While scholars often

call the silent features of Mary Pickford comedies, they take more from the subgenre of

melodrama, with comic elements added. Unlike silent male comedians like Charlie

Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon, no comediennes seem to

stand out in the pre-1930Ms primarily as a comedienne. If an actress was well known, it

was for other reasons beyond her comic talents, “Humanist cultural criticism has

neglected gender almost altogether in its studies of comedy” (Rowe 41). Before the

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athleticism of Katharine Hepburn and the distinct physical mannerisms of Marilyn

Monroe, the world of physical comedy was male-dominated. It was the advent of sound

film—when film could exhibit the power of words as much as it could pratfalls—that

women truly blossomed in comedy. The first superstar film comedienne would have to

be Mae West, who was as well known for her overt sexuality as for her comic delivery.

Novelist George Meredith states:

comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they

usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the

comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it…. The heroines of comedy

are like women of the world, not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted;

they seem so to the sentimentally reared, only for the reason that they use their

wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an

exhibition of their battle with men, and that of men with them; and as the two,

however divergent, both look on one object, namely, life, the gradual similarity of

their impressions must bring them to some resemblance (14-15).

The complexities of male-female relationships reached its peak in the Screwball

Comedies, in which the female protagonists were equal to, if not superior comic figures

to their male counterparts, “there never will be civilization where comedy is not possible;

and that comes of some degree of social equality of the sexes” (Meredith 32). I truly

believe that it is no accident that some of the Twentieth Century’s biggest stars were

actresses that found great success in comedies. Consider the place of Katharine Hepburn,

Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck,

Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Sophia

Loren, Jean Harlow, and Carole Lombard in film scholarship as well as in the annals of

pop culture, and remember that each one of these women had at least one major foray

into the genre of film comedy (American Film Institute).

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Some of the major explorations of the role of ethnicity in modern

American society also have occurred in film comedy. Unfortunately, Black characters in

comedy (at least until the 1970s with the success of Richard Pryor and later Eddie

Murphy) played minor roles, often as the object for comedy instead of the instigator of

comedy, “In keeping with racial stereotypes in other 1930s Hollywood films… lines in

the banter … take the African-American characters as the butt of the joke, implying that

they are lazy, ignorant or untrustworthy” (Curry 224). However, it is important to note

that the role of Black characters in drama was no better. Although, the first publicly

recognized achievement in film for an African American was Hattie McDaniel’s Best

Supporting Actress Academy Award win for Gone with the Wind (1939), no Black

performer held a lead role in a mainstream motion picture until Sammy Davis Jr. in the

1950s—of course the reader need recognize that Davis often played a comic lead in his

films. In my research, the only positive portrayal of African Americans in roles that are

superior to that of the roles of the White performers is the scene of the all-Black

congregation in Sullivan’s Travels, of course, a comedy.

Although addressed by film scholars more than any ethnicity, the role of

Black performers and characters in comedy are not the only minority performers that

found prominence in the genre of comedy. Many of the major comic performers and

filmmakers of the Twentieth Century are of Jewish heritage, including The Marx

Brothers, Danny Kaye, Gene Wilder, Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges, Mel Brooks, and

Woody Allen. Of these Jewish comic filmmakers and performers, and more not included

here, many used their ethnic identity as an inspiration for humor, most notably Mel

Brooks and Woody Allen. Others, especially the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers,

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utilized Jewish humor but as part of a larger catalogue of gags, not as a focal point for the

humor. One should note that the contrast between the two approaches is as much for

historical reasons as it is for personal taste, as the former comedians worked in the second

half of the Twentieth Century, whereas the latter comedians worked in the first half of the

Twentieth Century. Often Jewish performers in the earlier decades of the century would

deflect attention away from their own ethnicity by impersonating the stereotypes of other

ethnicities. This trait can be seen most notably in the performance of Al Jolson in

blackface for The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland 1927), and most pertinently for this study

in the way that Chico Marx exemplifies the stereotypes of an Italian immigrant.

With the appearance of various ethnicities and their stereotypes in film comedy,

the sound of speech from different backgrounds is also exploited in comedy. Consider

for example that characters with accents are untrustworthy in Duck Soup (1933) and

Young Frankenstein (1974, mocking the style of early horror). Note how later in the

century, accents were not so much presented as threatening in comedy, but they were a

source of humor—a case in point is Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clousseau, whose accent is

so bizarre that even fellow Francophones cannot understand him. In a similar manner,

the many accents represented in Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick 1964)—from Strangelove’s

German to Ambassador Sadesky’s Russian—work as a verbal gag in their hindrance of

communication and of understanding by way of the Principle of Comic Sense.

Perhaps more unique to comedy than either the roles of women or of ethnicity,

would be the demonstration of sexuality beyond mainstream heterosexuality. For a good

part of the century, the Production Code (earlier the Hays Code) and the Legion of

Decency expressly forbid any serious film study of homosexuality or transgender, “Nor

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was any hint of homosexuality (referred to in the Production Code as ‘sexual perversion’)

to be allowed” (Curry 217). The only socially acceptable way to address these issues was

in the least socially acceptable genre of film—comedy. Although many argue that the

examples of homosexuality and transgender in comedy are offensive and only presented

for laughs, one cannot deny that comedy filmmakers acknowledged that homosexual and

transgender people not only existed, but also hinted that perhaps homosexuals and

transgender people enjoyed living in the way that they did. Film comedy, as we have

seen in comedies for millennia, has the power to challenge the common stereotypes of the

time.

The Other

Sometimes going along with the above category, comic figures represent an

outsider, one who looks in on the society but can never truly be a part of it, “The clown

constitutes a liminal figure, existing on the edges of civilization and contesting its

dictates; the clown resists the civilizing process, celebrating social transgression, fluid

identity and bodily pleasure” (Karnick and Jenkins 156). Consider Chaplin’s Little

Tramp who watches The Flower Girl through the window of her shop in the end of City

Lights (1931). Harpo Marx seems to treat the world and other people as his playground.

Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934) can never really feel comfortable in a

lower class world. Sullivan will always be the wealthy observer who becomes trapped

within a world of hoboes and convicts, while Joe and Jerry will never truly be women in

an all-girl band. In Young Frankenstein (1974), the Creature’s greatest longing is to

belong; George Webber in 10 (1979) yearnsj to be one of the young people, but his own

personal tastes will always prevent that:

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One of the strongest impulses comedy can discharge from the depths of the social

self is our hatred of the ‘alien,’ especially when the stranger who is ‘different’

stirs any unconscious doubt about our own beliefs. Then the comedian unerringly

finds his audience, the solid majority, itself a silent prey to unrecognized fears….

Wherever comedy serves as a public defense mechanism, it makes all of us

hypocrites: we try to laugh our doubts out of existence (Sypher 242).

The comic figure takes individuality to the extreme, and fulfills the viewer’s wish to have

the strength to resist social etiquette.

With individuality, another topic explored through comic characters is alienation.

The exploration of loneliness and alienation in various art forms has existed for centuries,

but many scholars describe the distinctive ways in which alienation appeared in art of the

Twentieth Century. As I stated in Chapter II, artists have a choice whether to follow the

pattern of an existing style or to go against the existing style. Several scholars will argue

that this consciousness drives how many artists in the Twentieth Century approach the

idea of alienation and individuality:

what makes the modern period unprecedented is the fact that this time, in nearly

every category, the old reality has not been replaced by something equally

substantial, accessible, and satisfying. It has been replaced by a question in many

instances, and by a negation in others…. There is nothing in cultural history

comparable to the scale and speed of the 20

th

-century withdrawal from familiar

certainties (McMullen 15).

Scholar Roy McMullen describes the Twentieth Century artist’s tendency “Not so much

to use history as to escape from it” (19). He adds, “It is not uncommon for people to feel

obscurely that the various strands in the 20

th

-century cultural pattern, the various arts

included, go better with each other than each does with its own previous history” (14).

When speaking about the relation of art to alienation in the Twentieth Century, many

philosophers, like Herbert Marcuse, speak of “art as alienation” (Reitz 22), while at other

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times it may be seen as “a major political, economic, and philosophical weapon against

alienation” (Reitz 67). McMullen argues that:

1900 is a convenient, round date, useful for dramatizing the important fact that we

are now living in a new cultural period, one that is as distinct and all-embracing as

the Gothic and Renaissance periods that preceded it in the West—although much

more complex and geographically extensive (14).

I believe that it is no coincidence that a different view of isolation and alienation formed

during the first century of the motion picture. The archival nature of film—the fact that

one can experience a motion picture alone and in private encourages alienation from

others. McMullen describes this phenomenon as:

the ‘privatization’ of art…. The drama and ballet are flourishing in their public

forms, but both are now frequently viewed by a television audience of millions, in

domestic privacy….Many people now prefer, even if they are reluctant to say so,

the radio and records to public concerts and live opera. Symphonies are listened

to as if they were privately preformed string quartets. The microphone has

transformed the old music-hall song into an intimate ballad, for you alone (25).

The technology of the Twentieth Century allowed one to have an aesthetic experience

without any interaction with another human being. As we have seen through the first

decade of the Twenty First Century, a viewer can now access films alone on a computer,

without any human contact needed to receive a film, just by clicking a link.

Dramatic films such as Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica 1948), On the

Waterfront (Elia Kazan 1954), The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut 1959), Saturday Night

and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz 1960), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance

Runner (Tony Richardson 1962) show alienation as the result of some form of

inequality—whether social, economic, gender-related, age-related, or another form of it.

In these pictures, the alienated protagonist is the victim of a social problem. In a

contrasting way, comedy films show alienation as a source of power for the alienated

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person—for the comic heroine, alienation is a choice. The separation from other people,

and perhaps from society as a whole, is liberating for the comic character and is part of

what makes the situation of The Other such a unique quality of film comedy and such a

stumbling block for critics that try to approach comedy without understanding this

quality.

Comedy and Tragedy

Throughout this study, I have elucidated the reasons why film comedy is unique,

but what about its relationship to tragedy, the dramatic form with which it has been

contrasted since the earliest Greek plays? In the Twentieth Century, many scholars have

begun to examine the two forms not as contrary, but as complimentary, as film scholar

Kathleen Rowe explains, “every comedy contains a potential tragedy. But every tragedy

can also be seen as an incomplete comedy” (48). Litterateur Wylie Sypher declares:

Perhaps the most important discovery in modern criticism is the perception that

comedy and tragedy are somehow akin, or that comedy can tell us many things

about our situation even tragedy cannot. At the heart of the nineteenth century

Dostoevsky discovered this, and Soren Kierkegaard spoke as a modern man when

he wrote that the comic and tragic touch one another at the absolute point of

infinity—at the extremes of human experience, that is (193-194).

The existence of tragedy necessitates the existence of comedy and vice versa.

Philosopher Henri Bergson adds:

a comedy is far more like real life than a drama is. The more sublime the drama,

the more profound the analysis to which the poet has had to subject the raw

materials of daily life in order to obtain the tragic element in its unadulterated

form. On the contrary, it is only in its lower aspects, in light comedy and farce,

that comedy is in striking contrast to reality: the higher it rises, the more it

approximates to life; in fact, there are scenes in real life so closely bordering on

high-class comedy that the stage might adopt them without changing a single

word (148-149).

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Sypher adds, “the comic action touches experience at more points than tragic action”

(206). The greatest contrast appears in the elicited audience reaction. Comedy expects

one to laugh, while tragedy expects one to cry:

When we say, thus, that tragedy imitates a serious action, we mean that it imitates

an action which it makes serious; and comparably, comedy imitates an action

which it makes a matter for levity…. Comedy… removes concern by showing

that it was absurd to think that there was ground for it. Tragedy endows with

worth; comedy takes the worth away. Tragedy exhibits life as directed to

important ends; comedy as either not directed to such ends, or unlikely to achieve

them (Olson 35).

Literary critic Elder Olson goes on to argue that unlike tragedy, comedy needs the

element of surprise (47)—once again reminding the reader of the Principle of Comic

Timing.

Many scholars have studied the subtleties of the tragic hero against the comic

hero, and I take from their research, and my own, one major point in regard to this

contrast: the tragic heroine’s flaws are her undoing, while the comic hero celebrates his

flaws, “the tragic poet is so careful to avoid anything calculated to attract attention to the

material side of his heroes” (Bergson 94). Film scholar Frank Krutnik argues that the

tragic hero has set the standard by which comic heroes must be judged, “The comedian

figure deforms familiar conventions of film heroism, unified identity, and mature

sexuality” (29). Here we find one of the fundamental errors of the existing criticism of

film comedy: Just as one cannot judge an apple by how well it approximates an orange,

one cannot judge a comic heroine by how well she follows the conventions of a tragic

heroine. If a critic compares the opposing conventions of comedy and tragedy in order to

determine which results in a superior product, one genre will have to lose out, and history

has shown us that usually the losing genre is comedy. For example, it would sound

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foolish to argue “Katharine Hepburn’s performance as Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby

(1938) was a failure because it did not make me cry as much as Vivien Leigh’s

performance as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind (1939) did”, but this is exactly

what film reviewers do in calling for sensibility and emotional depth in a performance

regardless of whether the character or subject is comic or non-comic. I cannot

understand the flawed logic of these critics and scholars when they fail to appreciate a

comic hero because he does not “improve” as a human being, as one expects a dramatic

hero to do. Recall how in the end of Some Like It Hot, our three main characters remain

unchanged, and this lack of transformation is a completely acceptable way to end a

comedy.

Shakespeare stated that the world is a stage. I go beyond that to state that life is a

comedy:

art can never have a greater value than life, for it is ultimately measured by the

values of life. The values, then, are prior; and anyone who laughs, anyone who is

moved in any way by the comic, proclaims them… so long as comedy and the

comic are possible, so long will life and its values have meaning (Olson 128).

As Sullivan states at the end of his journey, “There’s a lot to be said for making people

laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than

nothing in this cockeyed caravan”. Comedy is an expression of joy, a joy that makes life

worth living.

Contrasting Subgenres

As I said in Chapter I, one of the greatest difficulties that anyone who wishes to

approach comedy will face is how comedy film encompasses so many, sometimes

contrasting subgenres. In the ten case studies alone, the reader experienced romantic

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comedy, slapstick comedy, anarchic comedy, Screwball comedy, British comedy, sex

comedy, and parody. What succeeds in one subgenre could fail in another. An Anarchic

Comedy, like Duck Soup (1933), or a parody, like Young Frankenstein (1974), could not

work with the particular conventions of the Romantic Comedy subgenre. As I said in

Chapter I, non-comic pictures fall into many distinct subgenres as well, but scholars and

critics do not seem to expect one dramatic subgenre to follow the conventions of another,

as they seem to expect when analyzing comedy. The comedy film as a concept is

abstract. One cannot possibly consider all variables involved in film comedy at any one

time. To complicate the matter further, comic subgenres are unruly; they are not self-

contained units in themselves, but rather are flexible and influence each other and cross

genres.

By focusing on the comic character, one is able to find two traits that are common

among all film comedy. First, as film scholars Kristine Karnick and Henry Jenkins argue

throughout their book Classical Hollywood Comedy, all comic heroes deal with issues of

identity. For some, like Sullivan, it is a conscious exploration of self, while for others,

like George Webber, a discovery of identity happens by accident. Second, someone is

always in control of the comedy. This control may be part of the film as we see with

Groucho Marx or Chaplin, or it may be clear that an outside force—the filmmaker—

controls the comedy at all times, as we see with the comedies of Wilder or Capra.

Although these two traits will be expressed in a different way depending on the film, they

exist in some form or another in every example of film comedy.

The first six sections in this chapter represent the existing scholarship that I have

accepted and my own personal insights. The following two points are those proposed by

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scholars as possible reasons for critics overlooking comedy that through my research and

discoveries, I have found reasons to refute.

Debated Argument #1: Low and High Comedy

Since the first comedies, scholars have attempted to define low comedy and high

comedy and the contrasts between them. The most basic definition of low comedy that I

could find comes from Wylie Sypher, “At the bottom of the comic scale—where the

human becomes nearly indistinguishable from the animal and where the vibration of

laughter is longest and loudest—is the ‘dirty’ joke or the ‘dirty’ gesture’” (208-209).

Sypher also presents an adequate definition of high comedy, “characters realized in depth

stand at the threshold of ‘high’ comedy, which is really a transformation of comedy of

manners. Whenever a society becomes self-conscious about its opinions, codes, or

etiquette, comedy of manners may serve as a sort of philosophic engine called ‘comedy

of ideas” (211-212). Many writers on comedy consider comedy of manners and high

comedy to be synonymous.

Several scholars will use the plays of Shakespeare as examples of low or high

comedy, but it is also within these plays that we see that there is no clear line separating

the two. In Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic, Henri Bergson claims that

something becomes high comedy the more true to life it becomes. However, Sypher cites

the character of Falstaff to disagree with Bergson’s statement:

at the basest level of his ‘low’ comedy, Falstaff ventures to address himself

directly to us, making us doubt Bergson’s opinion that only ‘high’ comedy is

close to life. Indeed, Falstaff shows how narrow the margin sometimes is

between high and low comedy, for he was doubtless born a comic machine of a

very low order—the miles gloriosus—yet as if by a leap he traverses the whole

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distance between ‘low’ and ‘high’ and is able to dwell disturbingly among us in

his own libertine way (227).

Some scholars will argue against two separate forms of comedy having any difference at

all, “Ordinarily we refer to ‘high’ and ‘low’ comedy; but we cannot speak of ‘low’

tragedy. All tragedy ought to be ‘high’…. as tragedy falls away from its ‘high’ plane it

tends to become something else than tragedy”(Sypher 206-207), instead becoming

melodrama.

Some scholars will argue that film reviewers only recognize high comedy while

they scorn low comedy. This argument, however, is simply not true if one thinks of high

and low comedy as it exists in the medium of film. High comedy exists at an intellectual

level of social assessment and interpersonal exchanges (dialogue driven for sound films,

but present in the silent films as gestures and expressions), existing in the realm of ideas.

Low comedy is almost always physical or speaks of physical things, acts, and behaviors.

Low comedy plays with patterns and repetition, existing in the physical world. While the

high comedy versus low comedy debate may have been legitimate in the early decades of

film, once the Screwball Comedies appeared, any contrast between high comedy and low

comedy was lost. For example, Bringing Up Baby (1938) presents the verbal banter of

Susan and David, as an assessment of the role of couples in society, while they roll down

hills and chase after George the terrier—high and low comedy occur simultaneously.

The argument that critics praise only high comedy in film becomes totally inaccurate

when we consider that Charlie Chaplin, who is perhaps the most praised comic

filmmaker, frequently exemplified low comedy as he presented his body as an object as

malleable as a puppet, typically to convey his ideas.

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Debated Argument #2: The Auteur Theory of Comedy

In earlier chapters, I discussed the auteur theory of filmmaking that a lot of

scholars cite when assessing films of any genre. The French word for author credits the

director as the author of his film, but not always in the literal sense of the screenwriter.

At its most basic, the meaning behind auteur is that the filmmaker retains absolute

control over the filmmaking process. In the realm of comedy, the auteur theory functions

in a different sense than simply noting the director’s methods. Often when the comic

performer and director are one in the same, as is the case of Woody Allen or Charlie

Chaplin, critics will treat the comedy as the product of an auteur:

Even within the account of a career of a recognized ‘comic mind’ like Buster

Keaton, the focus is on those films over which Keaton is presumed to have

creative control, while others… are read as marginal and uninteresting because

they are ‘someone else’s film’ (Karnick and Jenkins 5).

Scholars that support this theory argue that only the comedies of these auteur filmmakers

are the ones that critics will praise. While this argument holds true for Chaplin, and

arguably for Hawks and Sturges, many other comic filmmakers and performers including

The Marx Brothers, Capra, Mackendrick, Wilder, Brooks, and Edwards have all made

comedies that are highly praised by critics. By the late 1970s, the definition of auteur

becomes unclear as it applies to film comedy, because so many comic performers at this

time came from a background of standup comedy. As a standup comedian, like Woody

Allen, one has total control in every aspect of the timing, variety, and type of comedy—

one could argue the standup comic has the control of an auteur in that situation.

However, once the same comedian transitions to comedy film, under the direction of

another, he loses the connotations of auteur. Consider also how French critics and

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audiences find Jerry Lewis to be an auteur, but nearly all his films have received a poor

critical reception in the English-speaking world. These facts can only lead me to

conclude that the auteur argument does not adequately explain why the majority of critics

overlook film comedy in general.

Conclusion

Why are comedy films so critically underrated? With no single answer, we need

to consider all the recurring threads that I have addressed above, as well as the reasons

that I had already stated in previous chapters. 1) Many reviewers lack the knowledge of

what makes something a comedy, knowledge I have attempted to simplify with The Four

Principles of Comic Effect. 2) Comedy film goes against the established conventions of

filmmaking, rather it transgresses these conventions. 3) The negative experience from

viewing poorly constructed comedies makes many reviewers reluctant to consider any

comedy film as valid for study. 4) A critic looking for consistency and continuity

throughout the narrative could not find this in most film comedy. 5) By praising the

taboo focus of a film, one would have to go against what society determines to be an

acceptable attitude, behavior, or lifestyle. 6) Comedy is so close to life, that one cannot

fully accept a comedy without accepting all of one’s own personal flaws and the flaws of

one’s society. 7) Comedy purposefully contrasts with tragedy, and if a reviewer sees

tragedy as the ideal form of expression, the comedy will go against what that reviewer

considers to be of a high caliber of art. 8) Without an understanding of the conventions

of comedy, and with so many contrasting subgenres, a critic cannot hope to fully

appreciate a comedy film if she cannot even begin to understand what makes it a comedy.

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All of these above reasons point to the fact that there is no standard curriculum for the

study of film comedy and no common critical language for the discussion of film

comedy. Each critic and each scholar must therefore decide on their own what makes a

quality comedy and judge others against this very personal definition, using terms

perhaps only significant to that particular reviewer.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, critics overlook comedy because comedy

is in fact a hybrid of genres. Pure humor on its own is the gag, but the narrative of a

comedy film comes as a result of the comedy borrowing the narrative style, the qualities

of, and the conventions from another genre of film or from multiple genres. In a sense,

comedy alone cannot exist as a feature film. In order to clarify this statement, I would

like the reader to refer to the case studies presented in Chapter III. City Lights, It

Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, Sullivan’s Travels, Some Like It Hot, and 10 are

incomplete without the use of the conventions of romance. The Ladykillers and Some

Like It Hot would not have narratives without the use of the conventions of crime. Duck

Soup utilizes the conventions of war and drama. Sullivan’s Travels takes much of its

narrative from melodrama. Young Frankenstein uses the horror conventions. Even Santa

Claus Conquers The Martians makes use of science fiction conventions. Critics face

great difficulty when attempting to critique a film comedy, because a film comedy will

always follow the conventions of more than one genre. Often, the nature of comedy

dictates that a comic film will purposely undermine the non-comic conventions that it

utilizes—those conventions that do not follow the Four Principles of Comic Effect. The

fallacy in the current trend in film research and scholarship is the fact that reviewers

insist on evaluating comedies by how well they approximate another genre of film. One

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cannot compare the romance of Some Like It Hot to that of Casablanca (Michael Curtiz

1942), but critics, academics, publications, and film societies do try to compare them in

that respect every time that they judge a comedy against a non-comic film. One cannot

properly appraise a comedy film against the merits of a non-comic film, but should

instead judge it against fellow comedies, or judge its success as a foil to tragedy. In order

for comedy film to receive the recognition that it deserves, three things must occur: 1)

developing a clearer critical language for the discussion of film comedy, 2) developing a

clear methodology and canon, and 3) separating the comic film from the non-comic film.

Towards The Development of A Clearer Critical Language

for the Discussion of Film Comedy

In order for there to be an ongoing, shared discussion of film comedy, the film

critics and scholars of the world must agree to adopt a clearer critical language for use in

the analyses and critiques of film comedy. As with the difficulty in determining a

definition of comedy—the difficulty of making something approaching universal out of

elements that are quite disparate—so too is it difficult to agree upon a critical language

when one critic alone may not be able to write about two different comedies in the same

manner.

A critical language is made of two components: what the reviewers focus on and

what terms they use to examine this focus. As the reader will recall, for each case study,

I extracted the foci and terms of the represented reviewers. Across the ten case studies, I

have found the most common foci and the most common descriptive terms.

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The most prevalent focus of critics is the craft of filmmaking, including the

filmmakers, the writing, and the direction. They use terms like “meticulous craft”,

“professionalism”, and “authority” to describe a particular director’s touch. As for the

comic writing, the reviewers speak of it as “clever”, “witty”, “brilliant”, and “smart”,

calling attention to the specific comic skill and knowledge that a comic writer must

possess. Second to the filmmaking process, the reviewers focus on the performers—who

they are and the quality of their performances. They use terms like “mesmerizing” and

“moving” to describe performances. Note that neither term indicates an association to

humor, but rather a performance skill beyond that of comic timing and delivery. When

reviewers do not like a performance, they describe it using the terms “labored”, “too

seriously”, “forced”, or “too outrageous”, often revealing their own lack of understanding

the nature of parody.

Few critics address the overall structure of the films. If they feel that it succeeds,

they mostly write about its balance—whether that balance is between comedy and pathos

or between visual and verbal gags. When reviewers feel that the overall structure fails,

they either describe the film as having too many gags and not enough plot, or having a

good narrative and too few gags—ignoring completely the balance of narrative and gag

that is essential to comedy. Even fewer critics choose to focus on comedy’s nature to

explore that which is outside of what is socially acceptable, using the terms “taboo” and

“subversive”, when they do address it.

The biggest obstacle in the critical writing becomes apparent when critics attempt

to analyze the comedy of each film. Through my study, I have found two approaches that

critics take when discussing the comic moments. The first approach uses mostly

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ambiguous adjectives like “funny”, “humorous”, “hilarious”, and “silly”. These terms

really do not tell us much about the film, besides confirming the fact that it is a comedy.

Slightly clearer than those terms, are ones that describe what the comedy causes for the

viewer, “laughter”, “happiness”, and “inspiration”. Very few critics come close to

writing about the film in terms of the Principles of Comic Effect. For example, terms like

“whacky”, “intense”, and “zany”, describe comedy that is a result of the Principle of

Comic Logic—more clear descriptions of the comedy than the ambiguous terms above.

The second approach to discussing the comic moments within a film, and an

approach that I would like to see become part of a new, clearer critical language for

comedy analysis, is to write about the comedy in terms of the subgenres and of the

origins of film comedy. The terms used in this approach are specific, like “farcical”,

“Shakespearean”, “high”, “low”, “slapstick”, “English/British”, “black comedy”,

“parody”, “romantic comedy”, “anarchic”, and “silent comedy”. With these terms, we

also see ones particular to a subgenre. For example, “delightful”, “elegant”, “buoyant”,

“sophisticated”, “brightness”, “spirit”, “charm”, and “magic” all work well as signifiers

within the realm of the language of romantic comedy criticism. Once one has an

understanding of the Principles of Comic Effect, the common themes across film

comedies, the origins of film comedy, and the particular conventions of each comic

subgenre by way of the relative canon of film comedy that I shall propose in the next

section, one could write reviews of comedy films and understand the reviews of others

that use specific, referential terms, as above.

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Towards Forming A Relative Canon For The Study of Film Comedy

Just as there is no all-encompassing definition of comedy, there is no universally

recognized canon of quality comedy films. Informed by the Four Principles of Comic

Effect, and acknowledging the common threads that I have identified above, film scholars

across the world need to connect and to discuss a relative canon for the study of comedy.

In this way, future studies of film comedy would be well informed by historical examples

and methods with which to judge quality film comedy.

In order to properly analyze and to discuss comedy film in a reasoned way, the

academics of the world must develop clearer methodologies for the analysis of film

comedy. The construction of an historical overview is no easy task, as scholar Will

Straw argues, noting the “absence of a methodological and theoretical foundation for the

writing of film history” (237). Different authors organize film history in different ways

depending on who is reviewing the history:

The practical impossibility of exhaustivity and the regretted necessity in recent

historiographical writing of limited objectives are both meaningful only against

the larger project of a history of the cinema. What is disputed is the extent to

which this inevitable process of exclusion can serve to justify a retreat into

subjective whim. In neither case is the possibility of a complete cinema history

considered in anything beyond what might be called logistic terms (Straw 242).

The reader should not interpret this statement as an argument for the futility of trying to

construct an overall history of film comedy, rather the necessity of alternative ways of

categorizing films based on clear methods. One way to catalogue film comedy follows

the philosophy of Gerald Mast, who “proposes a number of total histories—‘a history of

cinema styles,’ ‘a history of cinema contributors’, ‘a history of camera technology,’ of

which a total cinema history would be ‘the aggregate collection’” (Straw 243). In order

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for a film historiography to make sense and to show connections among works, the

author must approach it beyond a chronology. One way to follow Mast’s philosophy is to

group films based on filmmakers and subgenres, as I have done in this study. In this way,

the student of film comedy may discover the themes and methods explored by different

works of one filmmaker and the recurring motives and styles within a subgenre, as well

as the social and economic history of the era in which the film premiered. I cannot argue

that the history of film comedy that I present through this study is exhaustive nor

definitive, but I can say that it is quite functional.

As with any genre of film, or with the selected works of any filmmaker, there will

always be outliers that cannot fit the mold of the majority. This necessary exclusion is a

condition in quite possibly every academic field. However, as I have demonstrated, by

grouping the major entries of a subgenre into one succinct subject, one can approach the

films of that subgenre in a similar way. From that point, one may compare and contrast

the shared qualities of the films in that subgenre to those of another subgenre. This form

of analysis is what I have performed in this study and have presented the results of which

earlier in this chapter—the discovery of common threads among films across all

subgenres of comedy. Like my efforts to categorize comedy films historically,

generically, and by filmmaker, the common elements across comedy subgenres that I

have presented in this study are in no way the only themes that one may discover in a

study of film comedy. However, I find these threads to be compelling and clearly

demonstrated in multiple films across the various subgenres of comedy. Hopefully, I

have presented my findings in a way that will be accessible to anyone who wishes to

study film comedy further.

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Towards Separating Comic from Non-Comic Films

From 1939 to 1966, separate Academy Award categories existed for black and

white and for color films. For example, Doctor Zhivago (David Lean 1965) in color, and

Darling (John Schlesinger 1965) in black and white, were both able to win Academy

Awards for Best Costume Design. Likewise, depending on what films are nominated, the

Academy may break the Best Original Score category into Musical Picture and non-

Musical Picture. This split allowed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy

Hill 1969) and Hello, Dolly! (Gene Kelly 1969) both to win Best Musical Score. Since

1943, there has been a separate category for Best Documentary. In a similar way, the

Best Animated Feature Film category has existed since 2001 (oscars.org). The Academy

of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences elects to create separate categories because its

members realize that there is a fundamental difference between the films that they

compare. There is a fundamental difference between comic and non-comic films—as

clear as the difference between black and white and color presentations—but there are no

separate Academy Award categories for comedy film. The Academy Awards is simply

the best-known example of film recognition, but the same is true for most critics,

scholars, publications, and film societies throughout the Western World.

Once the scholars and the critics of the world have considered a relative canon for

the study of film comedy and a clearer critical language for the discussion of film

comedy, a modification in the field of film criticism must take place in order for comedy

film to receive the critical and scholarly recognition that it deserves. This modification

may seem to be common sense, but even so, it is not widely practiced. My proposed

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modification is that critics and film societies must critique comedy as comedy and not try

to judge it against non-comic genres, but rather appreciate how it transgresses the

conventions of non-comic genres. Organizations that recognize achievements in the art

of film need to make separate categories for comedy.

If the respected authorities can develop a relative canon of film comedy, based on

clear methodologies and a clear critical language for the study of comedy, and if

adjudicating bodies may appraise comedy films without comparing them to the films of

other genres, then the great film comedies may take their rightful place among the

greatest films of all time. I look forward to the day when one does not have to choose

between Ben-Hur (William Wyler 1959) and Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder 1959) as the

superior film, but can acknowledge that the world is a better place because both can exist

concurrently.

I would like to conclude by saying that, personally, this study has left me with a

positive outlook. I am no longer ashamed that most of my pictures are comedies. With

the development of an understanding and of a critical language for comedy, the

embarrassment I feel in presenting comic films to viewers (that may find comic pictures

as belonging to an aesthetically insignificant genre) will some day prove to be unfounded,

or in comic terms, absurd. The comic hero teaches us the courage to follow our genuine

nature without fear of disapproval. I hope that the reader will be able to learn something

from this study and maybe even one day decide to perform their own study of film

comedy. If this study has not inspired you to do nothing more than to laugh, then my

thesis has taken the first step to becoming a successful comedy. Comedy eliminates our

all too frequent negativity, it turns our limitations into a joke, and it allows for the

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impossible. Through the comic, it is possible for us to realize our potential, to self-

actualize; for only through genuine laughter can we lower our defenses and achieve

understanding and illumination. After all, as John L. Sullivan learned, laughter is not

much, but it may be the best natural resource that human beings possess.

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FILMOGRAPHY

10. Dir. Blake Edwards. Perf. Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, Bo Derek, Brian Dennehy,

Robert Webber,. Warner Bros., 1979. DVD.

A Night at the Opera. Dir. Sam Wood. Prod. Irving G. Thalberg. By George S. Kaufman

and Morrie Ryskind. Perf. Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kitty

Carlisle, Allan Jones, and Walter King. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1935. DVD.

Airplane! Dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. Perf. Robert Hays, Julie

Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Kareem

Abdul-Jabbar. Paramount Pictures, 1980. DVD.

Annie Hall. Prod. Charles H. Joffe. Dir. Allen Woody. Perf. Woody Allen, Diane Keaton,

Tony Roberts. United Artists Corp., 1977. DVD.

Arsenic and Old Lace. Dir. Frank Capra. Prod. Frank Capra. Perf. Cary Grant, Raymond

Massey, Jack Carson, and Peter Lorre. Warner Brothers, 1944. DVD.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Dir. John De Bello. Perf. David Miller, George Wilson,

Sharon Taylor. NAI Entertainment, 1978. DVD.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Dir. William Beaudine. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Duke

Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo. Realart Pictures, 1952. DVD.

Blazing Saddles. Dir. Mel Brooks. Perf. Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens,

Harvey Korman. Warner Bros., 1974. DVD.

Bringing up Baby. Dir. Howard Hawks. Prod. Howard Hawks. By Dudley Nichols. Perf.

Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charlie Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, and May

Robson. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 1938. DVD.

312

Carry On England. Dir. Gerald Thomas. Perf. Kenneth Connor, Windsor Davies, Judy

Geeson. The Rank Organization, 1976. DVD.

City Lights a Comedy Romance in Pantomime. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie

Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers. United Artists, 1931.

DVD.

Design For Living. Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Perf. Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam

Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton. Paramount, 1933. DVD.

Dinner At Eight. Dir. George Cukor. Prod. David O. Selznick. By Herman J. Mankiewicz

and Frances Marion. Perf. Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean

Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Lee Tracy, Edmund Lowe, Billie Burke, Madge

Evans, Jean Hersholt, Louise Closser Hale, Phillips Holmes, May Robson,

Elizabeth Patterson, Harry Beresford, George Baxter, and Grant Mitchell. Metro-

Goldwyn-Mayer, 1933. DVD.

Dr. Strangelove, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Dir. Stanley

Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick, Victor Lyndon, and Ken Adam. By Stanley

Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, Gilbert Taylor, Anthony Harvey, and

Laurie Johnson. Perf. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan

Wynn, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1963.

DVD.

Duck Soup. Dir. Leo McCarey. Prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz. By Bert Kalmar and Harry

Ruby. Perf. Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Raquel

Torres, Louis Calhern, and Margaret Dumont. Paramount, 1933. DVD.

313

Groundhog Day. Dir. Harold Ramis. Prod. Harold Ramis. By Harold Ramis and Danny

Rubin. Perf. Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Andie MacDowell. Columbia

Pictures, 1993. DVD.

Hillbillys in a Haunted House. Dir. Jean Yarbrough. Perf. Ferlin Husky, Joi Lansing, Don

Bowman, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Basil Rathbone. Woolner Brothers

Pictures, Inc., 1967. DVD.

His Girl Friday. Dir. Howard Hawks. By Charles Lederer, Joseph B. Walker, Gene

Havlick, and M. W. Stoloff. Prod. Lionel Banks. Perf. Cary Grant, Rosalind

Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards,

Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman,

Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, and Edwin

Maxwell. Columbia, 1940. DVD.

It Happened One Night. Dir. Frank Capra. By Robert Riskin. Perf. Claudette Colbert,

Clark Gable, Walter Connolly. Columbia Pictures Corp., 1934. DVD.

It’s a Gift. Dir. Norman McLeod. Prod. William LeBaron, Hans Dreier, and John B.

Goodman. By Jack Cunningham, W. C. Fields, Henry Sharp, and Earl Hayman.

Perf. W. C. Fields, Le Roy Baby, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Julien

Madison, Tom Bupp, Tammany Young, Morgan Wallace, Charles Sellon, Diana

Lewis, Spencer Charters, and Dell Henderson. Paramount Productions, 1934.

DVD.

Jack and the Beanstalk. Dir. Jean Yarbrough. Perf. Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Buddy

Baer. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1952. DVD.

314

Kind Hearts and Coronets. Dir. Robert Hamer. Perf. Dennis Price, Alec Guinness,

Valerie Hobson. Rank Organization/ Ealing Studios, 1949. DVD.

Love Happy. Dir. David Miller. Perf. Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Groucho Marx, Marilyn

Monroe. United Artists Corp., 1949. DVD.

Love Story. Dir. Arthur Hiller. Perf. Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. Paramount Pictures,

1970. DVD.

Manhattan. Dir. Woody Allen. By Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman, and Gordon Willis.

Prod. Charles H. Joffe. Perf.-Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy,

Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, and Anne Byrne Kronenfeld. United Artists

Corp., 1979. DVD.

MASH. Dir. Robert Altman. Prod. Ingo Preminger. By Ring Lardner. Perf. Donald

Sutherland, Elliott Gould, and Tom Skerritt. 20th Century-Fox, 1970. DVD.

Modern Times. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, and Henry

Bergman. United Artists Corp., 1936. DVD.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail. By Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman, and

John Cleese. Perf. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry

Jones, Michael Palin. Sony Video, 1975. DVD.

National Lampoon’s Animal House. Dir. John Landis. Perf. John Belushi, Karen Allen,

Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst. Universal Pictures, 1978. DVD.

Pardners. Dir. Norman Taurog. Perf. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Paramount Pictures,

1956. DVD.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Dir. Nicholas Webster. Perf. John Call, Leonard

Hicks, Vincent Beck. Embassy Pictures Corporation, 1964. DVD.

315

Some Like It Hot. Dir. Billy Wilder. Prod. Billy Wilder. By Billy Wilder and IAL

Diamond. Perf. Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat

O’Brien, and Joe E. Brown. United Artists Corp., 1959. DVD.

Sullivan’s Travels [motion Picture]. Dir. Preston Sturges. Perf. Joel McCrea, Veronica

Lake, Robert Warwick. Paramount Pictures, 1942. DVD.

The Awful Truth. Prod. Leo McCarey, Everett Riskin, Stephen Goossón, and Lionel

Banks. Dir. Leo McCarey. By Viña Delmar, Joseph B. Walker, Al Clark, M. W.

Stoloff, Ben Oakland, Milton Drake, and Edward Bernds. Perf. Irene Dunne, Cary

Grant, Ralph Bellamy, Alex D’Arcy, Cecil Cunningham, Esther Dale, Joyce

Compton, Robert Warwick, and Mary Forbes. Columbia Pictures Corp., 1937.

DVD.

The General. Dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton. Perf. Buster Keaton. Schenck,

United Artists, 1926. DVD.

The Gold Rush. By Charlie Chaplin. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. Charles

Chaplin, 1925. DVD.

The Gorilla. Dir. Allan Dwan. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Jimmy Ritz, Harry Ritz, Al Ritz.

Twentieth Century-Fox, 1939. DVD.

The Great Dictator. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. United Artists, 1940.

DVD.

The Lady Eve. Dir. Preston Sturges. Perf. Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles

Coburn. Paramount Pictures, 1941. DVD.

316

The Ladykillers. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. Perf. Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Cecil

Parker, Herbert Lom, Danny Green, Katie Johnson. Rank Organization/ Ealing

Studios, 1955. DVD.

The Lavender Hill Mob. Dir. Charles Crichton. Perf. Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway,

Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, John Gregson, and Edie Martin.

Rank Organization/ Ealing Studios, 1951. DVD.

The Man in the White Suit. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. By Alexander Mackendrick,

Roger Macdougall, and John Dighton. Perf. Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood,

Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Vida Hope, George Benson, and

Edie Martin. Rank Organization/ Ealing Studios, 1951. DVD.

The Men Who Stare At Goats. Dir. Grant Heslov. Perf. Ewan McGregor, George

Clooney, Kevin Spacey. BBC Films, 2009. DVD.

The Odd Couple. Dir. Gene Saks. By Neil Simon. Perf. Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau.

Paramount Pictures, 1968. DVD.

The Philadelphia Story. Dir. George Cukor. P-rf. Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James

Stewart, John Howard, Ruth Hussey. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1940. DVD.

The Proposal. Dir. Anne Fletcher. Perf. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Touchstone

Pictures, 2009. DVD.

The Return of the Pink Panther. Dir. Blake E-wards. Perf. Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom,

Christopher Plummer, Catherine Schell. United Artists Corp., 1975. DVD.

The Road To Hong Kong. Dir. Norman Panama. Perf. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Joan

Collins. United Artists Corp., 1962. DVD.

317

The Seven Year Itch. Dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Evelyn Keyes.

Twentieth Century-Fox, 1955. DVD.

The Thin Man. Dir. W. S. Van Dyke. Prod. Hunt Stromberg. By Albert Hackett and

Frances Goodrich. Perf. William Powell and Myrna Loy. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,

1934. DVD.

The Werewolf of Washington. Dir. Milton Moses Ginsberg and Michael Dunn. By Milton

Moses Ginsberg, Bob Baldwin, and Arnold Freed. Prod. Nina Schulman. Perf.

Dean Stockwell, Biff McGuire, Clifton James, Beeson Carroll, and Jane House.

Milco/ Diplomat Pictures, 1973. DVD.

Tootsie. Dir. Sydney Pollack. By Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal. Perf. Dustin

Hoffman and Jessica Lange. Columbia Pictures, 1982. DVD.

Trouble In Paradise. Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Perf. Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert

Marshall, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith. Paramount

Pictures, 1932. DVD.

Twentieth Century. Dir. Howard Hawks. Perf. John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, and

Walter Connolly. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1934. DVD.

Village of the Giants. Dir. Bert I. Gordon. Perf. Ron Howard, Tommy Kirk, Johnny

Crawford, Joe Turkel, and Beau Bridges. Embassy Pictures Corporation, 1965.

DVD.

When Harry Met Sally. Dir. Rob Reiner. Perf. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. Castle Rock

Entertainment, 1989. DVD.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. Leonard Whiting

and Olivia Hussey. Paramount Pictures, 1968. DVD.

318

Young Frankenstein. Dir. Mel Brooks. Perf. Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Terry Garr,

Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn. Twentieth Century-Fox, 1974.

DVD.

319

Author’s Biography

Michael Arell (1989-) was born and raised in Bangor, Maine and graduated from

Bangor High School in 2008. He has had a lifelong love of filmmaking and started his

own film production company, Sleepy Dog Films, in 1996. While at the University of

Maine, Arell was a Music Education Major with a Film and Video Minor. He is a

member of Alpha Lambda Delta (National Honor Society) and recipient of that Society’s

Senior Book Award. He is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa (National Honor Society),

Pi Kappa Lambda (National Music Honor Society), The National Society of Collegiate

Scholars, and The Golden Key International Honour Society. He received the University

of Maine’s Presidential Achievement Award in 2009 and was declared a Presidential

Scholar in both 2011 and 2012, and made the Dean’s List every semester. Arell

graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maine in May 2012, receiving

Highest Honors. He plans to further his studies in graduate school and pursue a career in

the field of arts education. His future plans also include completing his current film

project, which is (of course) a comedy.