Parodies, dressing up and black humor: what comedies are and how they make you laugh

Comedy seems to be the simplest genre of cinema. Often they do not carry any deep meaning, but simply entertain. However, coming up with a good joke is not easy. Moreover, the film should not turn into a stand-up: we need not only textual humor, but also visual techniques that will amuse the viewer.

Therefore, over the years of the existence of cinema, directors have come up with many ways to make the audience laugh: from banal slaps and falls to mixing genres. Often the techniques are interspersed with each other, but you can highlight some of them in order to better understand the nature of screen humor.

Slapstick or buffoonery

It was from this genre that comedy in cinema began. In simple terms, the viewer is given a screen analogue of the circus. The main characters play exaggeratedly funny: they fall or beat each other. Actually, the very word "slapstick" means a cracker that imitates the sound of a slap in the face.

It's not hard to guess why the jokes in the movies originally looked that way. Firstly, the first pictures were silent, and even short ones. That is, they could not physically add a sufficient number of words to them, everything was limited to short inserts of text on the screen. And secondly, the first directors and actors came to the cinema from the theater and the circus, where they had already used similar techniques.

The very first comedy is considered to be The Sprinkled Sprinkler in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers. The plot is as simple as possible: the gardener is watering the plants, behind his back the boy clamps the hose. The hero is trying to figure out where the water has gone, and gets a jet in the face.

A little later, masters of buffoonery came to the cinema: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and, of course, Charlie Chaplin in the form of a tramp. Most often, they themselves directed films and played the main roles, building the main jokes on vivid images and antics.

Slapstick is still actively used in movies and TV shows: in modern comedies, actors still fall and hit each other with different objects. Although it seems less and less funny.

Screwball comedies

A genre that emerged with the development of sound films, entertains with a story, and not just with visual techniques. That is, here we are talking more about a funny scenario.

As in theatrical farce, the heroes of these stories find themselves in the most insane and unexpected situations. For example, they get from high society to a poor area. Such a move can be seen in the film "It Happened One Night" by Frank Capra. Regularly, the authors play out the plot of "The Prince and the Pauper", as in "Swap Places" in 1983 with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.

But best of all, the ideas of screwball comedy reflect scenes with disguises. Suffice it to recall the legendary film “Only Girls in Jazz”, where male musicians, escaping from gangsters, went on a trip with a women's orchestra. The ending of this film is one of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema. She is still laughing.

Elements of the genre appear in modern paintings, but they are not always used successfully. So, on the one hand, there is "Hudsucker's Assistant" the Coen brothers, clearly referring to the classics of cinema. On the other hand, "Grandmother of easy virtue" with Alexander Revva in women's clothing.

Situational comedy or sitcom

In contrast to the previous points, this humorous genre is much closer to real life. That is why it has become more widespread in the serial format on television. Sitcoms most often talk about ordinary people who solve their everyday problems. And the audience episode by episode (sometimes more than a dozen years) watching the development of the characters.

Sitcoms have been on TV since the 1940s, but I Love Lucy is the first true legend. The series is built around an eccentric housewife who dreams of becoming an actress. Interestingly, the main roles in it were played by real spouses: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnas. And it was on the set of this project that the live laughter of the audience sounded for the first time.

For sitcoms characterized by an abundance of textual humor with a fairly simple shooting. The characters are most often in the same locations (usually at home), where they meet friends and relatives. Although sometimes the action is mixed with the buffoonery mentioned, as was the case with "I love Lucy."

The heyday of sitcoms is considered the 70s and 80s, when All in the Family, Merry Company, The Cosby Show came out, and Seinfeld also started.

But at the same time, the format returns to television with enviable regularity. Friends, which aired at the turn of the century, is considered one of the greatest TV shows ever. And then they were replaced by The Big Bang Theory.

The thing is that the plots and humor of sitcoms are tied to understandable everyday situations: problems at work, relationships, disputes with friends. And almost any viewer can not only recognize himself in one of the characters, but also use jokes from the series in real life.

Romantic comedy or rom-com

This is a mixed genre in which a melodramatic story usually coexists with good jokes. Plots of the majority romantic comedies similar: two heroes are drawn to each other, but they cannot be together due to external circumstances. For example, the characters are representatives of different strata of society, as in the famous "Pretty Woman".

Or, at first, the characters do not like each other, but a feeling of affection gradually arises - a similar move came from the play "Much Ado About Nothing" and other works of Shakespeare.

Sometimes elements of eccentric comedy are added to the action: the hero must pretend to be someone else in order to win love.

But it is interesting that back in the 50s, directors periodically showed the reverse side of romantic stories. So, in the famous film "The Seven Year Itch" with Marilyn Monroe, the main character dreams of an affair with a beautiful neighbor. But most of the events unfold in his fantasies. And at the same time, the man imagines how his wife and son find out about his infidelity.

Absurd or surreal comedy

This genre is worth paying attention to for those who find sitcoms or romantic comedies too predictable.

Imagine that a funny scene is being played on the screen about a couple seeing a psychologist: the husband suspects his wife of cheating, and she has sex right with the doctor. This is what a typical comedy would look like. But if at some point a knight enters the frame and hits the hero on the head with a chicken, absurd humor is already used.

By the way, this is a description of a real sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, a bright representative of a surreal comedy. Also, the authors in their numbers could not show the main joke, or punchline, but directly admit that they forgot to write it. Or some hero ran from one scene to another.

This is what absurd humor is built on: the viewer is shown something that he does not expect, and something that does not fit the plot at all.

Parody

Here everything is clear from the name. Georg Hegel once said: "History repeats itself twice - first as a tragedy, then as a farce." Mel Brooks, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio, and authors of other well-known film parody.

The idea is simple: a director and screenwriter take a famous movie and turn the action into a comedic frenzy. So, two years after the release of the film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", appeared "Robin Hood and the men in tights."

And in some cases, the parody became more popular than the original source. Now few people will remember the disaster films “Zero Hour!” 1957 or "Airport 1975". But "Airplane!", Making fun of such stories, is still regularly included in the lists best comedies of all time.

The authors of such films often turn to absurd humor and anachronisms: the same Robin Hood realizes that he is an actor and shoots homing arrows. But often textual jokes on the verge of an oxymoron are also used. Suffice it to recall the legendary dialogue from Airplane!: it all starts as a harmless joke in which children imitate adults, and ends with a completely unexpected phrase.

Black comedy

The principles of this genre can be defined as follows: laugh at everything that is not customary to joke about. Death, war, illness, depression - the directors of such films turn everything into an occasion to have fun.

Often it is the combination of gloominess and humor that makes the plot funny. For example, if you take individual elements from the 2007 film Death at a Funeral, they seem completely standard. One of the characters, under the influence of drugs, makes funny faces, the other threatens to reveal obscene secrets. That's just, as the name implies, all the action takes place during the funeral and commemoration. Which raises the level of insanity.

In other cases, black humor becomes a way to convey serious topics to the viewer, turning into satire. So, one of the greatest comedies of all time, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Loved the Bomb, tells about the beginning of the war between the USSR and the USA. And it happens through the fault of one insane general. It's obvious that Stanley Kubrick sneered at the real danger frightening everyone.

Discharge with laughter and a combination of genres

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the postmodern era has strongly influenced the development of comedies. Directors began to mix genres more often, adding humor to action films, adventures and even horror.

And often a separate character is responsible for the jokes in the movie. Take Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Almost all the funniest scenes are connected with this hero.

But if Jack Sparrow directly affects the plot, then in other cases, such characters appear at all. only to amuse the viewer (they are sometimes referred to as comic relief - “detente with fur"). Suffice it to recall Pintel and Ragetti from the same Pirates of the Caribbean. Or Ned in the new Spider-Man films, Benji in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and many others.

And sometimes the picture itself is turned into an unexpected mixture of genres, in which a serious plot coexists with a playful idea. A prime example is President Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The picture does not look like a parody, but it is difficult to take seriously the scenes where the famous historical figure kills bloodsuckers with an ax.

Unfortunately, it is believed that this approach partly killed the purely comedy genre: the audience has enough humor in other films.

Do classic slapsticks still make you laugh or do you prefer absurd humor? Tell us about your favorite comedies and funny scenes from them in the comments!