Screwball+Comedy

Screwball comedy is principally a genre of comedy film that became popular during the Great Depression, originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. Many secondary characteristics of this genre are similar to film noir, but it distinguishes itself for being characterized by a female that dominates a relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged. The two engage in a humorous battle of the sexes, which was a new theme for Hollywood and audiences at the time. Other elements are fast-paced repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, and plot lines involving courtship and marriage. Screwball comedies often depict social classes in conflict, as in It Happened One Night (1934) and My Man Godfrey (1936). —wikipedia

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 * It Happened One Night (dir. Frank Capra, 1934)**

Generally, a "Screwball Comedy" is a romance between opposites, especially between an "idle rich", fun-loving woman and a hard-working, practical, serious man. In then end, it's the level-headed man who "comes around" to being more like, or at least appreciating, the madcap woman. Fast-talking wit and whacky situations are also important, but it's the Straussian Oppositions of male/female, rich/poor, emotional/practical and other dualities that really define the genre.

=__ History __= Screwball comedy first gained prominence with It Happened One Night (1934), which is often cited as being the first true screwball. Although many film scholars agree that its classic period had effectively ended by 1942, elements of the genre have persisted or have been paid homage to in contemporary film.

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 * Brining Up Baby (dir. Howard Hawks, 1938)**
 * Let's Play a Game Scene **

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 * What's Up Doc? (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)**
 * Homage**

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 * Raising Arizona (dir. Ethan and Joel Coen, 1987) **
 * Elements: Fast dialoge? Marriage and family? Class? Others connections? **

During the Great Depression, there was a general demand for films with a **strong social class critique** //and// **hopeful, escapist-oriented themes**. The screwball format arose largely as a result of the major film studios' desire to avoid censorship by the increasingly enforced Hays Code. In order to incorporate prohibited risqué elements into their plots, filmmakers resorted to handling these elements covertly. Verbal sparring between the sexes served as a stand-in for physical, sexual tension.

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The screwball comedy has close links with the theatrical genre of farce. Many elements of the screwball genre can be traced back to such stage plays as **Lysistrata** by Aristophanes, Shakespeare's **Much Ado About Nothing**, **As You Like It** and **A Midsummer Night's Dream** and Oscar Wilde's T**he Importance of Being Earnest**. Other genres with which screwball comedy is associated include slapstick, situation comedy, romantic comedy and bedroom farce.

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 * Lysistrata (Aristophanes, 411 BCE)**

=__ Characteristics __=

Films definitive of the genre usually feature farcical situations, a combination of slapstick with fast-paced repartee and:

 * the struggle between the sexes
 * the struggle between the economic classes
 * often feature a self-confident and often stubborn central female protagonist
 * plots involving courtship and marriage or remarriage.
 * Mistaken identities or other circumstances in which a character or characters try to keep some important fact a secret.
 * fast-talking, witty repartee (You Can't Take It With You (1937) and His Girl Friday (1940)). This stylistic device did not originate in the genre (although it may be argued to have reached its zenith there): it can also be found in many of the old Hollywood genre cycles, including gangster films.

Films definitive of the genre often feature:
**Some Like It Hot (1959)** media type="youtube" key="8-n-ybKQ_X0" height="360" width="640" align="center"
 * male characters cross-dressing further contributing to the misunderstandings [Bringing Up Baby (1938) I Was a Male War Bride (1949), and Some Like It Hot (1959)]


 * involve a central romantic story of a mismatched and even hostile couple that eventually overcome their differences leading to romance.
 * the man is lower down the economic scale than the woman (Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, both 1938).
 * the final romantic union is planned by the woman from the outset, while the man does not know about her intention at all. Bringing Up Baby contains a rare statement on that, when Katherine Hepburn says: "He's the man I'm going to marry. He doesn't know it, but I am."

These films offered a kind of cultural escape valve: a safe battleground on which to explore serious issues such as class under a comedic (and non-threatening) framework. Class issues are a strong component of screwball comedies: the upper class tend to be shown as idle and pampered and having difficulty coping with the real world. The most famous example is It Happened One Night; some critics believe that this portrayal of the upper class was brought about by //**The Great Depression**//, and the financially struggling moviegoing public's desire to see the rich upper class taught a lesson in humanity. By contrast, when lower-class people attempt to pass themselves off as upper-class, they are able to do so with relative ease.

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 * My Man Godfrey (1936.)**

Screwball comedies also tend to contain ridiculous, farcical situations, such as in **Bringing Up Baby**, in which a couple must take care of a pet leopard during much of the film. Slapstick/physical comedy elements are also frequently present, such as the numerous pratfalls Henry Fonda takes in **The Lady Eve (1941)**.

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One subgenre of screwball is known as the comedy of remarriage, in which characters divorce and then remarry one another (The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940)). Some scholars point to this frequent device as evidence of the shift in the American moral code, as it showed freer attitudes toward divorce (though the divorce always turns out to have been a mistake).

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=__Read:__=

2. Screwball Comedy by Gregg Rickman
[|What is this thing called screwball? Most commonly thought of as a cycle in Hollywood romantic comedies, running from the notable year of 1934...]

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=[|Bringing Up Baby: The story of a scene (thegaurdian.com)]=

= Case Study: Bringing Up Baby (dir. Howard Hawks, 1938) =