Screwball Comedy and Film Noir

Screwball Comedy and Film Noir PDF Author: Thomas C. Renzi
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786488603
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This is a comprehensive comparative analysis of the screwball comedy and film noir genres--two popular Hollywood staples that emerged around the same time. Despite their contrast in tone and theme, "Screwball" and "Noir" have many narrative elements in common. The author defines the two genres, discusses their historical development and inter-related conventions, and offers detailed comparative analyses of a number of films, among them The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday (screwballs), and Gilda and Sunset Blvd. (noirs).

Screwball Comedy and Film Noir

Screwball Comedy and Film Noir PDF Author: Thomas C. Renzi
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786488603
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This is a comprehensive comparative analysis of the screwball comedy and film noir genres--two popular Hollywood staples that emerged around the same time. Despite their contrast in tone and theme, "Screwball" and "Noir" have many narrative elements in common. The author defines the two genres, discusses their historical development and inter-related conventions, and offers detailed comparative analyses of a number of films, among them The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday (screwballs), and Gilda and Sunset Blvd. (noirs).

Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy

Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy PDF Author: Wes D. Gehring
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810844249
Category : Comedy films
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
It is an informative resource for film students and scholars and a thoroughly engaging read for film buffs."--BOOK JACKET.

Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934-1945

Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934-1945 PDF Author: Grégoire Halbout
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501347624
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Love at first sight, whirlwind marriages, break-ups, divorces, remarriage... What accounts for the enduring success of the Hollywood madcap comedies of the 1930s? Directed by masters of comedy (Hawks, LaCava, Leisen, Ruggles...) and featuring the decade's most iconic stars (Colbert, Dunne, Grant, Hepburn...), these films set romantic comedy standards for decades to come. Screwball comedy embarked on two challenging missions: to poke fun at established social norms and to undermine stereotypical depictions of gender roles, putting forward a discourse that postulated the possibility of equality between men and women. Grégoire Halbout's reexamination of screwball comedy provides a comprehensive overview of this (sub)genre, eschewing the auteurist approach and including “minor” works never before analyzed through the screwball lens. His book explains how these screwball stories met the expectations of a booming American middle class eager for the liberalization of morals, with daring plots, verbal humor and slapstick techniques. Building on the work of Cavell, Altman and Gehring, as well as international and French scholarship, Halbout's investigation unfolds in three parts. He first establishes a definition of Hollywood screwball comedy through a cross-sectional analysis of its socio-historical context and an in-depth examination of the genre. He then situates screwball comedy in relation to its institutional context. An exclusive study of archival material explains the emergence of a screwball aesthetic meant to subvert the prohibitions of the 1934 Hollywood Production Code through a verbal and visual rhetoric of diversion and mitigation. Finally, Halbout explores the social function of the genre's placement of romantic intimacy at the center of the public sphere and the democratic debate, confirming that screwball eccentricity upholds America's founding values: freedom of speech, free consent, and contractual engagement.

Talkies, Road Movies and Chick Flicks

Talkies, Road Movies and Chick Flicks PDF Author: Heidi Wilkins
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474406904
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The representation of gender in film remains an intensely debated topic, particularly in academic considerations of US mainstream cinema where it is often perceived as perpetuating rigid, binary views of gender, and reinforcing patriarchal, dominant notions of masculinity and femininity. While previous scholarly discussion has focused on visual or narrative portrayals of gender, this book considers the ways that film sound "e; music, voice, sound effects and silence "e; is used to represent gender. Taking a socio-historical approach, Heidi Wilkins investigates a range of popular US genres including screwball comedy, the road movie and chick flicks to explore the ways that film sound can reinforce traditional assumptions about masculinity and femininity, impart ambivalent meanings to them, or even challenge and subvert the notion of gender itself. Case studies include His Girl Friday, Easy Rider and Bridesmaids.

Pursuits of Happiness

Pursuits of Happiness PDF Author: Stanley Cavell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674739062
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Looks at seven classic romantic comedies of the thirties and forties, and compares what each film expresses about marriage, interdependence, equality, and sexual roles.

Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy PDF Author: Tamar Jeffers McDonald
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231503385
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
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 genre: screwball sex comedy and the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. A final chapter traces the lasting influence of these earlier forms within current romantic comedies. Films include: Pillow Talk (1959), Annie Hall (1977), and You've Got Mail (1998).

Hollywood Bedlam

Hollywood Bedlam PDF Author: William K. Everson
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806515342
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Screwball Comedy Films

The Screwball Comedy Films PDF Author: Duane Byrge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
My Man Godfrey, Four's a Crowd, My Favorite Wife, The Devil and Miss Jones--for their inspired blend of slapstick humor with casual elegance and witty repartee, these movies are examples of what became known as screwball comedies. This study focuses on the genre, film-by-film, year-by-year, providing the film enthusiast or serious researcher with an informed guide to the screen offerings of the era.Each of the major contributors is profiled, from directors (such as Capra, Hawks, McCarey or LaCava) to writers (Hecht, Krasna, Wilder, and others) to the inspired lunacy of performers (Grant, Lombard, Dunne, or MacMurray). The large filmography covers more than 50 films, appearing chronologically, and gives title, studio, date, time, director, producer, writers, source, photography, cast, plot description and background notes.

Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy PDF Author: Claire Mortimer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113696939X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Romantic comedy is an enduringly popular genre which has maintained its appeal by constantly evolving, from the screwball comedy to the recent emergence of the bromance. Romantic Comedy examines the history of the genre, considering the social and cultural context for key developments in new genre cycles. It studies the key themes and issues at work within romantic comedy films, focusing in particular on the representation of gender and how the genre acts as a barometer for gender politics in the course of the twentieth century. Claire Mortimer provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the genre, tracing its development, enduring appeal, stars and the nature of its comedy. Mortimer discusses both British and Hollywood classic and contemporary romantic comedies, ranging from canonical films to more recent examples which have taken the genre in new directions. In-depth case studies span a wide variety of films, including: It Happened One Night Bringing Up Baby Annie Hall Four Weddings and a Funeral Bridget Jones’s Diary Wimbledon Knocked Up Sex and the City This book is the perfect introduction to the romantic comedy genre and will be particularly useful for all those investigating this area within film, media or women's studies.

Romantic Comedy in Hollywood

Romantic Comedy in Hollywood PDF Author: James Harvey
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306808326
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 738

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Book Description
In 1934 four movies—It Happened One Night, Twentieth Century, The Thin Man, and The Gay Divorcee—ushered in the golden age of the Hollywood romantic ("screwball") comedy. Slangy, playful, and "powerfully, glamorously in love with love," the films that followed were unique in their combination of swank and slapstick. Here are the directors—Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise), Capra (It Happened One Night), Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), McCarey (The Awful Truth), La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door), Sturges (The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle at Morgan's Creek)—and their stars—Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, William Powell, Myrna Loy, among others—all described and analyzed in one comprehensive and delightful volume.