Let There Be Comedy

In the spring, they say, a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love; unfortunately, spring is still several months away, and instead my thoughts have turned toward comedy. Comedy movies, especially, since writing about farces is the Theatergoer's department.

One somewhat scurrilous young first-year, whose name shall not be mentioned here (as a result of a consultation with The Crimson's mighty legal affairs department), has dared to call me on one of the claims I made in a previous column--that is, that I would list some of my choices for the greatest comedies of all time.

Here's what he writes: "The concept of 'greatness' is itself historically and socially contingent. There are no objective criteria, but only ongoing relativistic processes that rest upon constant fluctuation in a series of class, race and gender factors. As a result, your puerile attempt to discuss 'the great comedies' is doomed to failure before it even begins."

Whoa, Clearly this guy has been hitting the books just a tad too hard. He'll probably ace his midterms, though. He can just slip those sentences into any given midterm and they'll make perfect sense. For you readers out there, feel free to use those sentences as well. They're in the public domain now.

At any rate, to leave the field of Weberian social science and to return to comedy, I would argue that the great comedies are the ones that still make us laugh, even though years or decades have gone by since they've been made or since we've seen them. They're the ones we still discuss, the ones that bring a smile to our faces under the most trying conditions. And sometimes, the best can even make us cry, like Pagl--Pagli--that Italian clown. You know the one I mean. (You'll know whether you're a devotee of high or low culture if you recognize the reference from opera or the "Seinfeld" episodes of a few years back).

That said, I'm going to try to give a brief history (highly idiosyncratic and selective) of movie comedy and include at least 10 to 20 movies that you must see, as well as just drop some names.

In the beginning there was Mack Sennett and he created the Keystone Kops. And he said let there be slapstick, and there was slapstick, which was good then, but seems dated now. And Sennett begat Buster Keaton, who did physical comedy better than anyone ever did, with the exception of Harold Lloyd, and whose works are still fine (see "The General," "The Navigator" and "700 Brides"). And Sennett also begat Chaplin, who learned from him but went well beyond to become the finest comic artist ever, the Little Tramp who mixed laughter and tears. And Chaplin created "City Lights" and "The Gold Rush" and "The Great Dictator" and "Modern Times" and they were very good indeed, taking silent film to a new dimension and adding sound judiciously and creatively.

And then it was the Thirties, and people were very sad, for they had nothing to eat; and so they went to the movies. And for the next two decades they saw Cary Grant and Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and Bette Davis in screwball comedies like "Bringing Up Baby," "The Philadelphia Story," "Adam's Rib," "The Awful Truth," and "It Happened One Night," among many others, and these were not just funny physically, they were also witty.

And it became the Forties and the Fifties, and there were movies with people with names like Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe, Abbott and Costello. And there were movies called "Abbott and Costello Meet the Werewolf," of which the less said the better. And then there was Ed Wood, who was funny when he didn't mean to be. And then there was Billy Wilder, with movies like "Some Like it Hot"--thank Heaven.

And then the Sixties began, and continued into the Seventies, and lo!--there was a new spirit at work in the land. And there were great black comedies like "Dr. Strangelove," and there was the early Woody Allen (this was when people guffawed at Woody rather than nodded thoughtfully). And there was "The Producers" and there were collaborations between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. And there was news from England in Richard Lester's Beatles movies and there was a group called Monty Python, of which the more said the better. And there was "Nashville" and "M'A'S'H" and "Shampoo."

And then there was the Eighties and the Nineties, and comedy was an even bigger business than before. And there were the television stars who came to Hollywood, and the stand up comics. And the number of movies multiplied as financing got better, and yea, became exceedingly multitudinous on the whole earth. And the voice of comedy became a babble (or babel), impossible to characterize. But there was "Trading Places" and "48 Hours" and "When Harry Met Sally" and "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Ghostbusters" and "Metropolitan" and "A Fish Called Wanda" and "The Player" and "Bob Roberts" and more beyond number and counting. But you've seen all of those, I'm sure.

Well, a quick and extremely sketchy history, to be sure, but all we have space for. All of the movies mentioned are not just worth watching--they're worth watching now. I don't care if you have midterms. Go out and get some of your movie homework done.

The Moviegoer regularly plagiarizes from the Good Book.