FIL2400 - History of the American Cinema
Week 6 - Romantic Comedy
From the screwball comedies of the 1930s ad 1940s through contemporary films like Pretty Woman and Four Weddings and a Funeral, romantic comedies often mask disturbing social and psychological observations with breezy dialogue and ridiculous slapstick. The segment explores both sides of American film comedy - the surface humor and its more critical roots in questions of gender and sexuality.
Television Assignment
Sunday Night/Monday morning - October 12
Midnight - 1:00 AM
Program 5 - Romantic Comedy
Additional Screenings
*It Happened One Night
Modern Times - Edison Library PN 1995.9 .C55 m6 1978
The General
His Girl Friday
Annie Hall
Pretty Woman
Working Girl
Police Academy
Learning Objectives
A. Understand comedy's function as cultural dreamwork, expressing tensions that
may otherwise remain suppressed
B. Identify and describe the great silent screen comedians
C. Identify the classic "screwball comedies" and note the stylistic and thematic
preoccupations of the subgenre
D. Understand the theme of social integration in American comedy
E. Understand the role of change in comedy - the way comedy celebrates
physical, social, and sexual flexibility
F. Understand the meaning of comic vulgarity - the "common" nature of comedy
in both social and physical terms
All Campuses - October 16 - October 19
See Telecourse Testing Information at end of handout.
Last day to drop the class without penalty - October 16!)
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