A Companion to Film Comedy
Edited by Andrew Horton and Joanna E. Rapf
Average rating:
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
A wide-ranging survey of the subject that celebrates the variety and complexity of film comedy from the ‘silent’ days to the present, this authoritative guide offers an international perspective on the popular genre that explores all facets of its formative social, cultural and political context
• A wide-ranging collection of 24 essays exploring film comedy from the silent era to the present
• International in scope, the collection embraces not just American cinema, including Native American and African American, but also comic films from Europe, the Middle East, and Korea
• Essays explore sub-genres, performers, and cultural perspectives such as gender, politics, and history in addition to individual works
• Engages with different strands of comedy including slapstick, romantic, satirical and ironic
• Features original entries from a diverse group of multidisciplinary international contributors
About the authors:
Andrew Horton is the Jeanne H. Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, USA. An award-winning screenwriter, he is also the author of twnty-eight books on film, screenwriting and cultural studies, including Screenwriting for a Global Market (2004), Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay (2nd edition, 2000), and The Films of Theo Angelopoulos (2nd edition, 1999). His screenplays include Brad Pitt’s first feature film, The Dark Side of the Sun (1988), and the award-winning Something in Between (1983), directed by Srdjan Karanovic. He has led screenwriting workshops around the world as well as across the United States. Joanna E. Rapf is Professor of English and Film & Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, USA. She writes regularly about film comedy, with recent essays on Woody Allen, Jerry Lewis, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, and Marie Dressler, and has edited books on a range of subjects including Sidney Lumet, On the Waterfront, and Buster Keaton.
Press Reviews:
"And of course, it very much is. An important subject needs an important companion. This is it. That's all, folks." ("Reference Reviews," 1 January 2014)
"This work is indispensible for any student or scholar who, in the spirit of Rabelais, Swift, and Chesterton, will laugh while studying film images. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers." ("Choice, " 1 July 2013)
"This work is indispensible for any student or scholar who, in the spirit of Rabelais, Swift, and Chesterton, will laugh while studying film images. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers." ("Choice, "1 July 2013)
See the publisher website: Wiley-Blackwell
> From the same authors:
Play It Again, Sam (2022)
Retakes on Remakes
Dir. Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal
Subject: Economics
Screenwriting for a Global Market (2004)
Selling Your Scripts from Hollywood to Hong Kong
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay (2000)
Updated and Expanded edition
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Three More Screenplays by Preston Sturges (1998)
The Power and the Glory, Easy Living, and Remember the Night
by Preston Sturges and Andrew Horton
Subject: One Film > Remember the Night, The Power and the Glory, Easy Living
Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost (1994)
Dir. Michael Brashinsky, Andrew Horton and William Rothman
Subject: Countries > Russia / USSR
The Zero Hour (1992)
Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition
by Andrew Horton and Michael Brashinsky
Subject: Countries > Russia / USSR
> On a related topic:
Too Funny for Words (2019)
A Contrarian History of American Screen Comedy from Silent Slapstick to Screwball
by David Kalat
Subject: Genre > Comedy/Humor
The Ritz Brothers (2021)
The Films, Television Shows and Other Career Highlights of the Famous Comedy Trio
by Roy Liebman
Subject: Actor > Ritz Brothers
The Comedy of Philosophy (2008)
Sense and Nonsense in Early Cinematic Slapstick
by Lisa Trahair
Subject: Silent Cinema
The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies (2007)
"Anything Further Father?"
Subject: Actor > Marx Brothers
The Art of Laurel and Hardy (2006)
Graceful Calamity in the Films
by Kyp Harness
Subject: Actor > Laurel & Hardy