alfred hitchcock
cartoons
Category=ATFA
charlie chaplin
comedy
comic occasions
cynical humor
dusan makavejev
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eq_non-fiction
film and comedy
film and television
film comedy
film criticism
film studies
frank tashlin
futility
genre films
humor
jerry lewis
matricide
mock realism
movie criticism
movie studies
nature of comedy
parody
penis size jokes
preston sturges
radical meta cinema
screwball
sight gag
the three stooges
violence and comedy
woody allen
Product details
- ISBN 9780520070400
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Sep 1991
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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. Some essays in the collection focus on general issues concerning comedy and cinema. In lively (and often humorous) prose, such scholars as Lucy Fischer, Noel Carroll, Peter Lehman, and Brian Henderson employ feminist, post-Freudian, neo-Marxist, and Bakhtinian methodologies. The remaining essays bring theoretical considerations to bear on specific works and comic filmmakers.
Peter Brunette, William Paul, Scott Bukatman, Dana Polan, Charles Eidsvik, Ruth Perlmutter, Stephen Mamber, and Andrew Horton provide different perspectives for analyzing The Three Stooges, Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Dusan Makavejev, and Alfred Hitchcock's sole comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as well as the peculiar genre of cynical humor from Eastern Europe. As editor Horton notes, an over-arching theory of film comedy does not emanate from these essays. Yet the diversity and originality of the contributions reflect vital and growing interest in the subject, and both students of film and general moviegoers will relish the results.
Andrew S. Horton is Professor of English at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is the author of George Roy Hill and the forthcoming Soviet Cinema under Glasnost.
