| Description |
vii, 251 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Problematics of film comedy. Notes on the sight gag / Noël Carroll -- Penis-size jokes and their relation to Hollywood's unconscious / Peter Lehman -- Sometimes I feel like a motherless child : comedy and matricide / Lucy Fischer -- In search of radical metacinema / Stephen Mamber -- Mock realism : the comedy of futility in eastern Europe / Charles Eidsvik -- Comic occasions. Charles Chaplin and the annals of anality / William Paul -- The light side of genius : Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the screwball tradition / Dana Polan -- Cartoon and narrative in the films of Frank Tashlin and Preston Sturges / Brian Henderson -- The three stooges and the (anti-)narrative of violence : de(con)structive comedy / Peter Brunette -- Paralysis in motion : Jerry Lewis's life as a man / Scott Bukatman -- Woody Allen's Zelig : an American Jewish parody / Ruth Perlmutter -- The mouse who wanted to f--k a cow : cinematic laughter in Dusan Makavejev's films / Andrew Horton |
| Summary |
The nature of comedy has interested many thinkers, from Plato to Freud, but film comedy has not received much theoretical attention in recent years. The essays in Comedy/Cinema/Theory use a range of critical and theoretical approaches to explore this curious and fascinating subject. The result is a stimulating, informative book for anyone interested in film, humor, and the art of bringing the two together. Comedy remains a central human preoccupation, despite the vagaries in form that it has assumed over the centuries in different media. In his introduction, Horton surveys the history of the study of comedy, from Aristophanes to the present, and he also offers a perspective on other related comic forms: printed fiction, comic books, TV sitcoms, jokes and gags |
| Analysis |
Cinema Comedy films History |
|
Cinema Comedy films History |
| Notes |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-244) and index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-244) and index |
| Subject |
Comedy films -- History and criticism.
|
|
Comic, The.
|
|
Wit and humor.
|
| Author |
Horton, Andrew, 1944-
|
| LC no. |
90042213 |
| ISBN |
0520069978 (alk. paper) |
|
0520070402 (paperback: alk. paper) |
|
