Download or read book Screwball Comedy and Film Noir written by Thomas C. Renzi and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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).
Download or read book Romantic vs Screwball Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2002-10-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous co-stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, have made screwball and romantic comedies a big seller at the box office. These seemingly timeless genres are as popular today as ever! This book takes a closer look at the precise meanings of the terms screwball and romantic. Film fans and scholars alike tend to lump film with laughter and love under a screwball/romantic umbrella and use the terms screwball and romantic interchangeably. In reality, there is a distinction; the screwball variety places its emphasis on "funny," while the more traditional romantic comedy accents "love." Covering over 60 titles each of romantic and screwball comedy dating from the 1930s to the present, this research tool not only demonstrates how screwball and romantic comedy are two distinct genres, but also highlights pivotal social and artistic changes which impacted both genres. Includes 24 black and white movie stills, countless quotations from selected films, an annotated bibliography, and a two-part filmography. Not only an informative resource for film students and scholars, but also an interesting read for film buffs.
Download or read book The Screwball Comedy Films written by Duane Byrge and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934 1945 written by Grégoire Halbout and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Screwball Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1986-02-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pursuits of Happiness written by Stanley Cavell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at seven classic romantic comedies of the thirties and forties, and compares what each film expresses about marriage, interdependence, equality, and sexual roles.
Download or read book Talkies Road Movies and Chick Flicks written by Heidi Wilkins and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Romantic Vs Screwball Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is an informative resource for film students and scholars and a thoroughly engaging read for film buffs."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Romantic Comedy written by Tamar Jeffers McDonald and published by Wallflower Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Romantic Comedy' offers an introduction to the analysis of one of the most popular but generally overlooked film genres. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining the iconography, narrative patterns and ideology which inform such films.
Download or read book Screwball written by Ed Sikov and published by Crown. This book was released on 1989 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screwball is the first richly illustrated tribute to the movies that tells one mad, illogical truth: Mutual loathing is no reason to give up on love. More than 240 pictures in striking duotone celebrate these exhilarating comedies.
Download or read book ReFocus The Films of Preston Sturges written by Jaeckle Jeff Jaeckle and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Director, screenwriter and comic genius, Preston Sturges has been an influence on filmmakers ranging from Orson Welles to the Coen brothers. The first person to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, he wrote and directed some of the most bizarre, controversial, and downright hilarious comedies of the 1940s, including Sullivan's Travels and Hail the Conquering Hero. He may be the most talented Hollywood filmmaker yet to receive the critical recognition he deserves. The Films of Preston Sturges is a pioneering collection of essays by world-famous scholars that chart Sturges' contributions to Hollywood cinema, revealing his pivotal status as an early writer-director, exploring his inimitable style, and making a bold case for his ongoing influence today. Reawakening interest in this filmmaker's life and works, this book will remind readers why Sturges' movies remain not only immensely enjoyable, but of great cultural significance as well.
Download or read book Screwball written by Larry Swindell and published by Echo Point Books & Media, LLC. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uninhibited, vivacious, and a startling talent, Carole Lombard was the darling of her day. Her wit and charm made her the social as well as artistic hub around which Hollywood revolved during the '30's. She was years before her time in her sophistication, and her independence established her as an oracle of the New Woman. She was an enchanting beauty and a great artist—the supreme comedienne during the high point of American film comedy. Larry Swindell vividly recreates her career and extraordinary personal life. Her fabled love affair and marriage with Clark Gable are here put into proper focus for the first time. Told by a master chronicler o f the movies, this is a vibrant biography of the hometown girl who became one of greatest stars of Hollywood's golden age.
Download or read book Barry Sonnenfeld Call Your Mother written by Barry Sonnenfeld and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **A New York Times Editor's Choice selection!** This outrageous and hilarious memoir follows a film and television director’s life, from his idiosyncratic upbringing to his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black. Barry Sonnenfeld's philosophy is, "Regret the Past. Fear the Present. Dread the Future." Told in his unmistakable voice, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother is a laugh-out-loud memoir about coming of age. Constantly threatened with suicide by his over-protective mother, disillusioned by the father he worshiped, and abused by a demonic relative, Sonnenfeld somehow went on to become one of Hollywood's most successful producers and directors. Written with poignant insight and real-life irony, the book follows Sonnenfeld from childhood as a French horn player through graduate film school at NYU, where he developed his talent for cinematography. His first job after graduating was shooting nine feature length pornos in nine days. From that humble entrée, he went on to form a friendship with the Coen Brothers, launching his career shooting their first three films. Though Sonnenfeld had no ambition to direct, Scott Rudin convinced him to be the director of The Addams Family. It was a successful career move. He went on to direct many more films and television shows. Will Smith once joked that he wanted to take Sonnenfeld to Philadelphia public schools and say, "If this guy could end up as a successful film director on big budget films, anyone can." This book is a fascinating and hilarious roadmap for anyone who thinks they can't succeed in life because of a rough beginning.
Download or read book Romantic Comedy in Hollywood written by James Harvey and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1998-03-22 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Romantic Comedy written by Claire Mortimer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Popular Film and Television Comedy written by Frank Krutnik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik take as their starting point the remarkable diversity of comedy's forms and modes - feature-length narratives, sketches and shorts, sit-com and variety, slapstick and romance. Relating this diversity to the variety of comedy's basic conventions - from happy endings to the presence of gags and the involvement of humour and laughter - they seek both to explain the nature of these forms and conventions and to relate them to their institutional contexts. They propose that all forms and modes of the comic involve deviations from aesthetic and cultural conventions and norms, and, to demonstrate this, they discuss a wide range of programmes and films, from Blackadder to Bringing up Baby, from City Limits to Blind Date, from the Roadrunner cartoons to Bless this House and The Two Ronnies. Comedies looked at in particular detail include: the classic slapstick films of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin; Hollywood's 'screwball' comedies of the 1930s and 1940s; Monty Python, Hancock, and Steptoe and Son. The authors also relate their discussion to radio comedy.
Download or read book Bringing Up Equality Gender in Howard Hawks Screwball Comedy Bringing Up Baby written by Oliver Krause and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1,0, Pace University, language: English, abstract: The arts, especially films, have always functioned as mirrors of current conditions in society. Gerald Mast states that the reflection of social reality is the primary intention of commercial motion pictures (203). Film comedies, in particular, are able to deal with these conditions in an iconoclastic manner and can question or even expose “the shams of society,” because they use “the entertaining comic form” (21). After the imposition of the Production Code on American film productions in 1934, it appears the conservative values of gender, love and family become more consolidated in films. According to Jane Greene, the outcome of this suppression of, for example, explicit sexuality led to an all new genre - the “screwball comedy” (45). The iconoclastic quality of comedies during that time, hence, relied on a “unique aesthetic for destroying Hollywood assumptions while appearing to subscribe to them” (Mast 250). In particular, the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) breaks the classical gender roles and undermines male supremacy in the Hollywood conventions long before the second wave feminist movement of the 1960s. In particular, the female lead’s “screwball” actions can be read as a performance in sharp contrast to the Victorian role model of women. In the following analysis of specific scenes, the film’s use of the cinematic techniques of mise-en-scene, cinematography, and its opposing main characters in order to construct an equal gender image will be examined, drawing mainly on readings by scholars such as Gerald Mast, S.I. Salamensky, and Stanley Cavell.
