COMEDY HISTORY
A comedy is a story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic central character.
Comedy is one of the oldest genres in film; some of the first silent movies were comedies. Charlie Chaplin is probably the most famous comedian of silent films. The 1920’s and the introduction of sound into movies made verbal humor possible. Silent film comedy was replaced by dialogue from comedians like W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. In the 30’s screwball comedies were introduced. For example the three stooges. At the end of the 50’s comedy started to become darker and more serious themes emerged. In the 80’s gag-based films like “Young Frankenstein” became popular. One of the major developments in the 90’s was the romantic comedy. “Four weddings and a funeral”. Recently we have seen a rise in Stoner comedies “Pineapple Express”, gross-out humor “American Pie” and sex comedies. Like Superbad, and most of Judd Apatows films.
Comedy originated from classical Greek words Komos meaning Revel and Kome meaning Village. Greeks and Romans confined the word comedy to descriptions of stage-plays with happy ending. It was during the Middle Ages where comedy became associated with satire and humor in general.
Aristotle defined comedy as one of the four original genres of literature. According to Aristotle all comedies begin with low, typically “ugly” guy who cant do anything right. By the end of the story the ugly guys usually wins the pretty girl. Comedy includes the unrealistic in order to portray the realistic.
EXPLANATION OF THE GENRE AND ELEMENTS
In this film genre, many aspects that go into making the film (mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, screenwriting, etc.) often share one common goal: to make absurd a situation that is inherently natural or normal. Because of this tendency within the genre, comedy and slapstick make use of very natural mise-en-scene, building sets and lighting schemes that often mimick everyday life, the natural, if you will.
In terms of lighting, comedies often make use of neither high- or low-key lighting and rarely use the “three-point” lighting technique as a way to identify or emphasize a certain element or character in the scene due to the fact it would be highly unnatural and formalistic, as opposed to real and naturalistic. The same applies to the way many shots are composed and/or angled in a given scene, using visual information and perspective that creates an illusion in which the viewer believes themselves to be part of the scene, employing the use of many medium and medium-close up shots and eye-level angles. By doing so, the viewer is able to visually consume what is onscreen very easily and believes they can relate to the action that is taking place in the film. Again, the same line of reasoning applies to the use of color values and lens filters: the less use of the two, the more realistic and palpable the situation being filmed is for the viewers to understand.
Obviously not all comedy films share this same tendency for creating a very realistic and “liveable” atmostphere in a film, but the genre is inherently created to emphasize writing and plot to be more significant in terms to trying make absurd the very plain and boring phenomenon that is everyday life. To communicate this, the genre resorts to using very realistic mise-en-scene and cinematography to carry out this point. On the other hand, the subgenre of slapstick often deviates from the rather realistic mise-en-scene normally found in comedies, incorporating a more varied array of camera techniques, as well as a more unusual and formalistic mise-en-scene.
For example, the film “Caddyshack” is seen as slapstick in the sense that it diffentiates from a normal comedy by refusing to retain realistic or natural character intercourse and plot. This is evidenced by the more the higher contrasts in lighting, higher color values, higher contrasts in camera proxemics, use of puppets as characters and more spread-out organization of visual information. These aspects all tend to be hallmarks of the slapstick subgenre and differ from the normal comedy genre by not always using natural enviornments or situations and instead use more formalistic and Hollywood-type effects that emphasize the very physical and gesture-driven genre. In a sense, the absurd is made more absurd by letting go of coherent time and space within the natural world of comedy. But on the whole, the genre still stands as a testament to people’s ability to abuse and deform everyday life and try to confuse and comment upon it with humor.
EXPLANATION OF MISE-EN-SCENE IN A FILM (30′s-70′s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgOxqwVd5Z8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF-AcR14Km8&feature=related
EXPLANATION OF MISE-EN-SCENE IN GENRE (70′S-00′S)
