Intro to History of Film

Comedy

Readings:

Mandatory movie for this learning unit:

  • Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawk, 1938)

Comedy is probably the first of all film Genres.

Very soon, the pioneers of cinema discovered that movies are an excellent instrument to make people laugh.

You could watch a good example of a comic experiment in the first lecture on the Lumiere brothers – You will surely remember one of the streaming clips, ‘L’Arroseur arose (The Sprayer Sprayed), in which one naughty kid plays a prank on the gardener who was watering his backyard. It was the simplest and most primitive comedy technique: the Slapstick. The kid steps on the hose, and then release it when the gardener is looking at it. This survey of the historical development of the comedy starts with the silent period and will then focus on the golden era of Hollywood during the 1930ies.

Silent Period

Mack Sennett (1880 – 1960)

Mack Sennett founded the Keystone Studio and made of this technique, The Slapstick, the most popular and durable of all silent screen techniques.

The Slapstick is basically a succession of extremely fast scenes with a lot of action, spectacular chases, funny tumbles and falls.

The Keystone Studio was the factory of comedy talents in the silent period, some very popular names at that time, such as Harry Langdom, Ben Turpin, Charley Chase, Mabel Normand. All of them started their careers as members of the Keystone cops crazy troop.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was during several years the most popular of the Keystone stars until he fell from grace.The humor of this pioneer, who also started the black legend of Hollywood, was rather simple, even rough. The climax in his movies was always the predictable cake battle.

Still, the most important name that emerged from the Keystone factory was Charles Chaplin.

Charles Chaplin (1889-1977)

  • He developed the “tramp” character that would make him the first international star in his second movie for the Keystone Studio: “Kid Auto Race at Venice” (1914).
  • The Tramp:
    • Arbuckle’s Trousers + Mack Swain’s Moustache + Ford Sterling’s shoes + derby, cane and ill fitting jacket.
    • He is a vagabond, but he is also elegant in his humility.
    • He is crude, but romantic;
    • He is a rascal, but also a poet;
    • He is cynical, but also highly moral.
  • Movies:
    • Keystone
      • “Kid Auto Race at Venice” (1914)
      • “Making a Living” (1914)
    • Essanay
      • “The Pawnshop” (1916)
      • “Easy Street” (1917)
      • “The Immigrant” (1917)
      • “The Cure” (1917)
    • First National (the first star who earned a million dollar a year).
      • “The Kid” (1921) – The first movie he directed.
      • “A Women of Paris” (1923)
      • “The Gold Rush” (1925)
      • “City Lights” (1931)
      • “Modern Times” (1936)

Buster Keaton (1895-1966)

  • He started with “Fatty” Arbuckle, but soon he created his own production company (1919) and between 1920 and 1923, he made 19 excellent visual shorts, some of them:
    • “One Week” (1920)
    • “The Playhouse” (1921)
    • “The Boat” (1921)
    • “Cops” (1922)
    • “The Balloonatic” (1923)
  • Keaton was much less theatrical than Chaplin – much more cinematic.
  • In his movies, there was a lot of action, a complex editing and also bold special effects.
  • They were also beautifully photographed, with a meticulous attention to the mise-en-scène.
  • He shares the directorial credit with Eddi Cline.
  • Some of his master works:
    • “The Three Ages” (1923)
    • “Sherlock Jr.” (1924)
    • “The Navigator” (1925)
    • “Seven Chances” (1925)
    • “The General” (1926)
    • “The Cameraman” (1928)
The General (whole movie)
The General (train chase scene)

Talkies

The Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo)

  • The most absurd, chaotic, anarchic, and surrealist humor ever.
  • Their cinema is so peculiar and, at the same time, extremely simple:
    • In their movies, there was no plot,
    • There was no active camera,
    • There was no editing.
    • They just acted – and frequently improvised in front of a static camera. The comic effect always relied on the acid and rapid dialogues between Groucho and Chico, and also in the deaf-mute chaos created by Harpo.
  • Their best and most personal movies:
    • Animal Crackers (1930)
    • Horse Feathers (1932)
    • Duck Soup (1933)
  • When they transferred to the MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer), they had less freedom for Chaos.
  • Their movies were technically better and more sophisticated, but they lost freshness
  • The studio also imposed the long musical interludes, showcasing Harpo and Chico, which are today very annoying when you are watching their movies today.
  • The most famous movies of this second phase:
    • “A Night at the Opera” (1935)
    • “A Day at the Races” (1937)
A Night at the Opera (Cabin Scene)
Duck Soup (Mirror Scene)

Frank Capra (Bisacquino, Sicily, 1897 – 1991)

  • Leading director in the mid 30ies and in the 40ies. He was extraordinary successful, and won several Oscars during those years.
  • Especially important was his work with the actors Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper, who were able to represent the ideal American:
    • A humble, modest and common man with no especial education or intelligence,
    • But with solid traditional values and a powerful will that make him able to forge the own destiny.
  • His comedies are usually romantic and sentimental,
    • “Platinum Blonde” (1931)
    • “It Happened One Night” (1934)
  • Still, he could also be very funny with black humor.
    • “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944)
  • He combined comedy and political involvement in the movies that nowadays are regarded as his bests:
    • “Mr. Deeds goes to Town” (1936)
    • “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” (1939)
    • “Meet John Doe” (1941)
    • “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)
It’s a Wonderful Life

Howard Hawks (1896 – 1977)

  • He made masterworks in all the most popular genres, but his movies always had a very singular comedy touch.
  • Film Noirs with Humphrey Bogart
    • “To Have and Not To Have” (1944)
    • “The Big Sleep” (1946)
  • Or Westerns with John Wayne
    • “Rio Rojo” (Red River, 1948)
    • “Rio Bravo” (1959)
    • “Eldorado” (1967)
  • But he had also pure “screwball” comedies, commonly starring Cary Grant
    • “Bringing Up Baby” (1938)
    • “His Girl Friday” (1940)
    • “Ball of Fire” (1941)
    • “I Was a War Bride” (1949)
    • “Monkey Business” (1952)
    • “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953)
  • Hawks was doing movies from the 30ies to the 70ies.
  • Probably because he was able to associate to the best actors, cinematographers and writers.
    • He wrote the screenplays with such names as William Faulkner, Ernst Hemmingway and Ben Hetch.
His Girl Friday

Ernst Lubitsch (Berlin, 1892 – 1947)

  • He was born in a prosperous Jewish family, and that was the reason why he had to emigrate to the USA although he had a extremely successful theatrical and film career in Germany, where he started joining the famous Deutsches Theater of Max Reinhardt as an actor.
  • In Germany, working already as a director, he developed his famous “Touch”
  • The “Lubitsch Touch”:
    • “A cocktail of sophistication, self-parody, cynicism and an elegant sexual piquancy”.
  • Some of the movies of his German period:
    • “Anna Boleyn” (1920)
    • “Deception” (1920)
    • “Die Bergkatze” (1921)
  • His most important movies in the USA:
    • “Desire” (1936)
    • “Angel” (1937) – Both with Marlene Dietrich
    • “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” (1938) – With Gary Cooper
    • “Ninotchka” (1939) – With Greta Garbo.
    • “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940) – With Jimmy Stewart
    • “That Uncertain Feeling” (1941)
    • “To Be or Not to Be” (1942)
    • “Heaven Can Wait” (1943)
To Be or Not to Be (Opening Scene)

Introduction to Bring Up Baby

The movie selected for the learning unit on Comedy is 

Bringing Up Baby

(Howard Hawks, 1938)

Bringing Up baby is the perfect example of a subgenre of the comedy that became very popular during the 1930ies and 40ies, the so-called

Screwball Comedy

The secret recipe of the screwball cocktail is a combination of sophistication and slapstick. We watch in those movies stylish, elegant, charismatic Hollywood stars – such Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, etc – acting in the most bizarre and silliest situations.

This is the comic effect: Elegant, sophisticated people saying eccentric things and acting crazily.

The most important element in this genre are the excellent dialogues – very dynamic, very eccentric and, of course, very funny at the same time.

Please, read the brief article on Bring Up Baby you can find in this learning unit before watching the film.

Literature

  • Parkinson, David:
    • “History of Film”. Thames and Hudson, 1995
  • Hill, J. and Church Gibson, P. (ed.)
    • “The Oxford Guide to Film Studies”. Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Mitchell, W.J.T.:
    • “The Language of Images”. The University of Chicago Press, 1980.
  • http://www.lubitsch.com/