The most up-to-date study of the Hollywood romantic comedy film, from the development of sound to the twenty-first century, this book examines the history and conventions of the genre and surveys the controversies arising from the critical responses to these films. * Provides a …
Comprising over 90 essays and richly illustrated with over 200 images, the Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film provides a chronological portrait of American film history from its origins to the present day. Taken as a whole, the essays in this collection represent a compreh…
Romantic Comedy offers an introduction to the analysis of a popular but overlooked film genre. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining iconography, narrative patterns, and ideology. Chapters discuss important subgroupings within the ge…
This book analyzes the evolution of comedy, defining five distinct periods and discussing the dominant comedic trends of each: screwball comedies, offering distraction from the Great Depression; suspense comedy, reflecting America's darker worldview during World War II; 1950s ba…
This work examines the Depression decade's popular type of comedy--the clown. The study filters its analysis through twelve pictures. While some of the comedians in this text have generated previous analysis, some funnymen are all but forgotten. This book addresses these oversig…
The twelve comedy films examined are distinguished by an equal number of defining comic performances. Each film focuses on the central theme of "clown comedy": Resilience, the encouragement or hope that one can survive the most daunting of life's dilemmas. Each film can be regar…
This illustrated overview presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of Screwball Comedy and Film Noir, two popular Hollywood genres that emerged at nearly the same time. Two appendices offer a comprehensive filmography of Screwball comedies from 1934 through 1954 and a selec…
Classic comedy routines and individual gags have been around for hundreds of years; the best of these making their way through theater, circus, film and television, surviving to present day. As these timeless comedy gems are traced to their beginnings and followed through the ye…
