Since the early days of cinema, comedy has been one of its most popular and successful genres. A good comedy has lots of scenes with funny characters or funny situations that make us laugh. Characters can be funny if they're clever and say or do witty things, or if they're socially inept and say or do embarrassing things, or if they're not very clever and they say and do stupid things. Scenes can be funny if something unexpected or shocking happens or if something embarrassing or ridiculous happens.
In early silent movies a form of visual comedy called slapstick was often used. Comical slapstick actions like slapping, slipping and falling over had been used in live theatre for centuries before they were used in silent films like Harold Lloyd's Safety Last, Charlie Chaplin's The Kid and Buster Keaton's stunt-filled comic adventure The General. Many later film-makers have also used visual comedy. French film-maker Jacques Tati created complex sight gags that were as perfectly timed as a ballet dance and M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle and Playtime are now regarded as some of the best comedies ever made. American film-maker Woody Allen also used visual comedy in films like Bananas and Sleeper, although in later films he focused on spokencomedy more than visual comedy. Like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in their own films, and these four artists are now seen by many as being among the greatest comedy film-makers of all time.
After it became possible to use sound in films in the early 1930s, American screwball comedies became very popular. These films were often about smart women getting what they wanted at a time when men had the power to control nearly every aspect of a woman's life. In screwball comedies this "battle of the sexes" was part of a farce full of gags and witty banter. A farce is a comedy about a ridiculous or improbable situation, and slapstick farces like the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera and W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick were as popular as screwball farces in the 30s and 40s. Later farces include the 1959 film Some Like It Hot in which two musicians disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band in order to escape from dangerous gunmen, and the 1968 farce The Party in which Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor who is mistakenly invited to a fancy Hollywood party. More recently, farces like Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou? by Joel and Ethan Coen and The Hangover by Todd Phillips have been hits with moviegoers.
A farce in which we see carefully planned robberies and murders go terribly wrong is called a caper. British capers of the 40s and 50s like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers set the pattern for later capers like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, A Fish Called Wanda, The Big Lebowski and Snatch. One of the darkest and funniest capers is Fargo by the Coen Brothers in which a car salesman plans the kidnapping of his wife. Fargo finds comedy not only in the failed kidnapping, but also in the failure of a business and the failure of a marriage. Films that find humour in these and other serious topics like war, illness and death are often called black comedies.
One of the most famous black comedies is Dr Strangelove, a film in which a crazy general causes a nuclear war. Black comedies about death and murder include Man Bites Dog, Heathers and God Bless America, and black comedies about terrorism include Charlie Wilson's War and a 2010 British movie about a group of inept would-be terrorists called Four Lions. Similar movies that aren't quite as "black" as these films are sometimes called dark comedies. These movies are often about less serious personal or social problems, and one of the most famous is a movie that won five Academy Awards in 2000 called American Beauty.
American Beauty is about a middle-aged family man who dreams of sleeping with his neighbour's teenage daughter, and many people see it as a dark satire that pokes fun at the "American dream", or the idea of living a perfect life with a perfect family in a perfect American home. Another film that satirizes the American dream is The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey, but not all satires target this topic. In movies like Network, Broadcast News and Anchorman it's television news that's targeted, and in political satires like Being There, Wag The Dog, Bulworth and In The Loop it's politicians who are targeted. The entertainment industry has also been targeted in satires like Mel Brooks' The Producers and Robert Altman's The Player.
There are also films that poke fun at particular movie genres by copying their style and adding humour to the mix. These movies are called parodies or "spoofs" and some of the funniest include Airplane!, a disaster movie spoof starring Leslie Nielson, and Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks' farcical parody of the cowboy-filled Western. Also popular are detective movie spoofs like A Shot in the Dark with Peter Sellers and The Naked Gun - From the Files of Police Squad! with Leslie Nielson, spy movie spoofs like the Austin Powers movies and 2015's Spy, and parodies of the horror genre like Young Frankenstein, Ghostbusters, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead.
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a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词) a.复杂的 n.综合企业 (初中英语单词) speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词) n.面貌；神色；方向 (初中英语单词) vt.假装；隐瞒 n.伪装 (初中英语单词) a.印度的 n.印度人 (初中英语单词) ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词) n.失败；衰竭；破产 (初中英语单词) n.生病，不健康，疾病 (初中英语单词) n.专科学校；学会；协会 (初中英语单词) n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词) n.招(款)待；联欢会 (初中英语单词) n.幽默，诙谐 (初中英语单词) n.灾难，不幸 (初中英语单词) n.侦探 a.侦探的 (初中英语单词) n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词) n.喜剧；喜剧场面 (高中英语单词) a.突然的；意外的 (高中英语单词) ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词) a.荒谬的；可笑的 (高中英语单词) n.好莱坞 (高中英语单词) a.腐烂的；腐朽的 (高中英语单词) n.店员；推销员 (高中英语单词) ad.错误地 (英语四级单词) a.令人震惊的；可怕的 (英语六级单词) a.未必有的 (英语六级单词) a.中年的 (英语六级单词)
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