A Companion to Film Comedy

Andrew Horton, Joanna E. Rapf

John Wiley & Sons, Dec 14, 2015 - Performing Arts - 584 pages

A wide-ranging survey of the subject that celebrates the variety and complexity of film comedy from the ‘silent’ days to the present, this authoritative guide offers an international perspective on the popular genre that explores all facets of its formative social, cultural and political context

• A wide-ranging collection of 24 essays exploring film comedy from the silent era to the present
• International in scope, the collection embraces not just American cinema, including Native American and African American, but also comic films from Europe, the Middle East, and Korea
• Essays explore sub-genres, performers, and cultural perspectives such as gender, politics, and history in addition to individual works
• Engages with different strands of comedy including slapstick, romantic, satirical and ironic
• Features original entries from a diverse group of multidisciplinary international contributors

Contents

• Comedy Before Sound and the Slapstick Tradition: 13
• The Funny Women of the Silent Screen: 39
• The American Slapstick: 61
• Comic Performers in the Sound: 87
• Jacques Tati and Comedic Performance: 111
• Charlie Chaplin of New Hollywood: 130
• Mel Brooks Vulgar Modernism and Comic Remediation: 151
• The Intimate Scenarios: 175
• Taking Romantic Comedy Seriously in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless: 196
• Comedy in the Contemporary: 217
• Masculinity Adoption and Identity: 236
• Topical Comedy Irony and Humour Noir: 251
• Utopian Comedy and the Aesthetics: 273
• The Totalitarian Comedy of Lubitschs To Be or Not To Be: 293
• Dark Comedy from Dr Strangelove to the Dude: 315
• Comic Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity: 343
• American Indian Film Comedies: 365
• The Greek Americans: 387
• International Comedy: 409
• Gender Humor and the Plastic Body: 432
• Comedy Italian Style and I soliti ignoti Big Deal on Madonna: 454
• Humor Loss and the Possibility: 474
• Comic Animation: 497
• From Animated Portmanteau to: 521
• Index: 545

About the author

Andrew Horton is the Jeanne H. Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, USA. An award-winning screenwriter, he is also the author of twnty-eight books on film, screenwriting and cultural studies, including Screenwriting for a Global Market (2004), Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay (2nd edition, 2000), and The Films of Theo Angelopoulos (2nd edition, 1999). His screenplays include Brad Pitt’s first feature film, The Dark Side of the Sun (1988), and the award-winning Something in Between (1983), directed by Srdjan Karanovic. He has led screenwriting workshops around the world as well as across the United States.

Joanna E. Rapf is Professor of English and Film & Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, USA. She writes regularly about film comedy, with recent essays on Woody Allen, Jerry Lewis, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, and Marie Dressler, and has edited books on a range of subjects including Sidney Lumet, On the Waterfront, and Buster Keaton.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Companion to Film Comedy
• Editors: Andrew Horton, Joanna E. Rapf
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2015
• ISBN: 1119169550, 9781119169550
• Length: 584 pages
• Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism; Photography / Techniques / Cinematography & Videography; Social Science / Sociology / General