Hello everyone! Welcome to Ministry of Cinema’s web series Film Genres and Hollywood.
I’m Bradley Weatherholt, and I’ll be your host on this exploration into genre filmmaking.
In this episode we dig into the quips and gags of a long line of pranksters in Hollywood’s
most mischievous genre, the comedy.
The comedy is Hollywood’s oldest, most versatile genre, involving the mishaps,
misfires, andmissteps of life.
The genre’s adaptability is endless, open to multiple narratives and styles, usually
ending positively although satire and parody may highlight humor’s darker aspects.
Tailored for silent productions, comedies which relied on humorous visuals were prolific
in cinema’s early days, beginning with short, one-reel scenarios.
In fact, the renowned film inventors, August and Louis Lumiere, included a comedy in their
first public screening in 1895.
In the early 20th century, film innovator Mack Sennet, the “King of Comedy” founded
the Keystone Studios, the comic powerhouse of early Hollywood.
Through the works of Keystone, Sennett developed his signature comedic style of frantic slapstick.
Keystone’s first successes came from silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.
Arbuckle’ and Sennett struck gold with a string of film spanning a decade until Arbuckle’s
fall from grace with a much publicised rape and murder scandal involving three trials.
However, Sennett had diversified Keystone’s acting crew, and Arbuckle’s fall did not
spell the doom for the studio, but instead opened the door for the rise of a new star,
Charlie Chaplin.
Mentored by Arbuckle, Chaplin quickly rose through the ranks of Sennett’s comedy troupe.
His debut film Making a Living released in 1914 and showcased Chaplin’s brilliant horseplay.
A year later, Chaplin, in a burst of creativity, produced 15 films for the Essanay Film Company,
including The Tramp, which showcased the character that would propel Chaplin to the peak of not
only the comedy genre but all of global cinema.
Chaplin is best remembered for both is comic genius and his business and artistic influence
on early studio Hollywood.
In 1919, Chaplin teamed up with D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks to form
United Artists studio in order to have financial and artistic control of his projects.
Through United Artists, Chaplin produced some of his greatest work, including The Gold Rush.
The film is a perfect introduction to Chaplin’s Tramp persona, exemplifying all the charm
and slapstick the character had to offer.
Years after Gold Rush, Chaplin released City Lights, a romantic comedy which showed a softer,
sentimental side to the Tramp.
In the film, Chaplin falls for Virginia Cherrill’s character, a beautiful blind woman who works
as a flower girl.
After City Lights, Chaplin made a political statement in Modern Times, a film involving
the Tramp’s struggles with industrial capitalist society.
Through humor, Chaplin satirized the dehumanizing labor of assembly line production.
Likewise, Chaplin released his own talking films, including The Great Dictator, the actor’s
poignant jab at Hitler and fascism.
Dictator was Chaplin’s most commercially successful picture, released right before
America’s involvement in WWII.
Another important actor of early Hollywood was Buster Keaton.
Originally a vaudevillian actor, Keaton is best remembered for his signature expressionless
face and acrobatic stunts.
His deadpan style led to his nickname “The Great Stone Face.”
Though responsible for many great films, Keaton is best remembered for his masterpiece
The General.
Like Chaplin, Keaton also began his early career under the wing of “Fatty” Arbuckle,
being inducted into cinema with his mentor in Keystone’s The Butcher Boy.
Another famous actor in comedy’s early beginning was Harold Lloyd.
Although Lloyd’s films are not as easily remembered now as Chaplin’s City Lights
or Keaton’s The General, his work includes some of the most seminal pictures of the silent
era, including the famous clock gag in 1923 film Safety Last!.
With the advent of sound, comedy was forced to evolve.
Bridging the the gap between silent and sound film, the duo Laurel and Hardy were both silent
slapstick stars and witty conversationalists splitting their career between sound and silent pictures.
The definitive comedy team of early sound comedies was the Marx brothers.
Each of the five brothers had various roles, but the team was primarily lead by three of
the five: the mustachioed wisecrack Groucho, Italian accented pianist Chico, and girl-chasing
pantomime Harpo.
The team’s success spanned a career of numerous pictures, most notable of these being Duck
Soup and A Night at the Opera.
Around the time of the Marx Brothers, a new subgenre of comedy, called the screwball comedy,
began to emerge.
Noted for zany plots, rapidfire dialogue, and sarcasm, the screwball subgenre began
with films like It Happened One Night.
The film helped developed many of the tropes of the subgenre, influencing Howard Hawks
in his screwball masterpiece His Girl Friday.
His Girl is often described as the definitive screwball picture.
All the popular elements of the genre are embodied in the pictures fresh narrative and
excellent performances by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
Another screwball worth mentioning is 1941’s The Lady Eve, starring Henry Fonda as a feckless
victim to the femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck.
Beginning in the 1940s, Abbot and Costello rose up to become the dominant comedy duo
of their time.
Similar to Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello starred in a number of quirky pictures including
Abbot and Costello Go to Mars and Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy.
Beginning in the mid 50’s, accomplished studio director Billy Wilder produced a string
of successful comedies ranging from dramatic emotional pieces to downright spoofs.
The Seven Year Itch, Wilder’s now less acclaimed picture, starred Marilyn Monroe at the height
of her beauty, featuring one of cinema’s most popular images.
Monroe and Wilder teamed up years later in the raunchy gangster spoof Some Like It Hot.
The film is often remembered as one of comedy’s best, featuring brilliant performances by
Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon.
The film’s silly plot, involving two out of work musicians forced to crossdress to
join a travelling all-female band, was so successfully executed the trope of crossdressing
is now an often explored plot element in comedies.
A year after Some Like it Hot, Wilder and Lemmon took a different direction, teaming
up for the much darker The Apartment.
By the time Wilder’s comedies were released, the cultural landscape of Hollywood had changed.
On television situation comedies or “sitcoms” satisfied most of the public’s need for
comedic content.
Hollywood had to adapt in changing demands.
In order for Hollywood comedies to flourish, each film released had to offer something
uniquely cinematic.
An excellent example of this comes in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, a racy narrative
about a young teenager who is seduced by the attractive Mrs. Robinson, the mother of the
The film embodies the spirit of its time, and could only have been produced for the big screen.
Around the time of The Graduate’s release, one of cinema’s greatest parodists Mel Brooks
made his directorial debut with The Producers, a clever pic about pseudo-producers deliberately
attempting to produce a box-office flop to con the studio.
Brooks furthered his absurdist style with western parody Blazing Saddles, horror lampoon
Young Frankenstein, and sci-fi farce Spaceballs.
Around the same time, New York stand-up comic turned auteur Woody Allen released his classic
idiosyncratic pictures, including Best Picture Winner Annie Hall.
Annie Hall, innovative in numerous ways, is a refreshing spin on romantic comedies, tearing
down many cinematic conventions, even breaking the sacred fourth wall to show the paranoid
ramblings and musings of the angst-ridden protagonist.
Another Allen classic, Manhattan, showcased the director’s unique take on New York city,
but this time in black and white.
Much in contrast to Woody Allen, comedy team composed of the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams
struck a different kind of success with zany, pun-ridden slapstick parodies.
Perhaps most quoted of these films is Airplane!, a film which employs every gag in the book
and includes Leslie Nielsen in one of his most memorable roles.
Nielsen would join the team in many additional films, including the spoof of cop crime flicks
The Naked Gun and its sequels.
At the times of filmmakers like Brooks and Zucker, television was making perhaps its
single greatest contribution to the film genre with late night sketch comedy show Saturday
Night Live.
SNL provided the world with a comedic renaissance of young comedic actors and new comedic styles.
The talent recruited by SNL would eventually spawn several films, dominating an entire
period of the genre.
Standing as the crew’s earliest star, John Belushi embodied the frenetic east coast spirit
of SNL.
Together with director John Landis, Belushi would shine in comedy classics National Lampoon’s
Animal House and The Blues Brother.
Belushi’s tragic death from an overdose of speedballs, a cocktail of cocaine and heroin,
marked a shocking end to a rising star.
Sadly, history repeated itself with a similar death by Chris Farley, another SNL upstart
famous for his bombastic goofball character in films such as Tommy Boy.
However, the lives of SNL alumni are not always tragic.
Steve Martin, a frequent guest star of Saturday Night Live, performed in many notable comedies
including Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with costar John Candy, as well as his comic
tour de force The Jerk.
Likewise, Martin’s SNL costar Bill Murray has had an incredibly successful career.
Alongside Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, Murray starred in the cultural landmark Ghostbusters,
an Academy Award nominated adventure comedy following a gang of paranormal exterminators.
Murray and Ramis also struck gold years later with Groundhog Day,
an introspective and existential piece.
Ramis also directed Bill Murray alongside Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, a comedy that equal
parts involves golf and a gopher.
In the same year, another SNL star, Eddie Murphy, teamed up with Dan Aykroyd in Trading
Places, a successful Landis picture that puts a twist on the nature vs nurture debate.
A year later, Murphy struck gold with the blockbuster comedy Beverly Hills Cop.
Together with Ghostbusters, which was released in the same year, Beverly Hills Cop defines
the comedic style of the decade.
Two decades later, Murphy would star in another defining comedy, Shrek, as a donkey sidekick
to an ogre voiced by Mike Myers.
Myers, yet another SNL performer, had also had a successful comedic career by the time
of Shrek, playing the slacker rocker Wayne in Wayne’s World, a spinoff from an SNL skit.
Also, Myers had written and starred, as both hero and villain, in his Austin Powers films
which spoofed of James Bond and spy films.
And finally, Adam Sandler, another SNL graduate, starred in his own string of films under
Happy Madison Productions.
It’s true that films centered around SNL casts have dominated the comedy genre after
the television show’s debut, however, the works of a few other notable directors and
actors stands out at this time.
Perhaps the most successful non-SNL director of this time, Rob Reiner had critical and
commercial success with various comedies.
Reiner made his directorial debut with This Is Spinal Tap, a highly-quotable mockumentary
about the pitfalls of a washed up hair band’s comeback.
Reiner then directed a fairy tale rom-com spoof The Princess Bride, based on William
Goldman’s fantasy novel of the same name.
Right after Princess Bride, Reiner directed one of the romantic comedy subgenre’s seminal
pictures, When Harry Met Sally.
Another notable director of his time, John Hughes specialized in coming of age teen comedies.
Beginning with Sixteen Candles, Hughes again teamed up with a group of young actors called
the “Brat Pack,” in The Breakfast Club, perhaps Hollywood’s pivotal and remembered
coming-of-age high school comedy.
After Breakfast Club, Hughes released another iconic high school film, the often quoted
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
A survey of the late 90’s and turn of the millenium comedy would be incomplete without
mentioning the work of comedian Will Ferrell.
Beginning his career in SNL, Ferrell had minor roles in a few films till he hit it big with
his party boy performance as Frank the Tank in frat comedy Old School.
The cast of Old School belonged to a loosely tied comedic group sometimes referred to as
the frat pack which were featured in several comedies of the time.
The frat pack teamed up in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which starred Will
Ferrell as his now iconic newsman that catapulted his career to the peak of Hollywood comedies.
After Anchorman, Ferrell led in an almost unstoppable run of box office successes such
as Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and Blades of Glory.
One of the leading filmmakers to make this style of comedy possible
was producer Judd Apatow.
Apatow produced several influential films of the time including the highest grossing
high school comedy of all time Superbad, but he also directed a few notable ones as well,
beginning with the 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Apatow also directed Knocked Up starring Seth Rogen in a stoner character that would define his career.
Seth Rogen’s stoner character was celebrated further in Pineapple Express, the weed-centric
narrative where Rogen and costar James Franco channel Cheech and Chong
energy in the comedy adventure.
Rogen and Franco would eventually become their own comedic team, building their own style
of comedy in movies like This is the End.
One final director to mention, Wes Anderson, is like Woody Allen in that his artistic,
highly stylized comedies transcend just laughs and gaffes, truly standing as works of art.
Anderson’s elaborate set design and costumes, atypical plots, and unique dialogue highlight
the films of his career.
Anderson masterfully directed
large casts in films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Before wrapping up comedies, it’s worth a moment to look at
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen as the Kazakh TV host who is sent to America to learn the
culture and spread Kazakh greatness.
The film blends live action shots where Cohen’s character plays Borat in real life situations,
strung together by a loose filmed narrative.
The film, innovative for its structure, is a comical landmark for making blatant political
statements about American uniculturalism and ignorance of international people.
From Charlie Chaplin, through Screwball Comedies, and all the way to Borat, comedies make us
rethink censorship and what society will culturally acceptable.
This aspect of comedy remains unchanged, and we expect to see this tradition to continue
in Hollywood’s next century.