Comedies like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard?
and it’s rated G
Then you have directors like Michael Curtiz, who did everything from The Adventures of Robin Hood to Mildred Pierce to Casablanca to Yankee Doodle Dandy to King Creole. Og forbid someone telling him to stick to one genre!
Sorry for the digression.
I know that he didn’t make comedies exclusively, but it’s the genre he’s most known for and had the most success with.
Best director Oscar, 1946: The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder
Best director Oscar, 1951, Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder
Best director nominations: Double Indemnity, Stalag 17, Witness for the Prosecution
Hard to say he’s most known for or had more success with comedies.
Ok, I concur that my example wasn’t the best one possible. Content now?
But I think I got a better one. Just like in my book, “Witness Of The Prosecution” is Billy WIlder’s “Hitchcock” movie, “The Trouble With Harry” is Hitch’s “Wilder” movie. And a Hitchcock comedy really is an outlier.
Actually, Witness for the Prosecution was the antithesis of Hitchcock.
Not sure how to do spoilers here, but the movie is pretty old, so suffice to say, Hitch liked doing movies about people falsely accused. He had a long string of them, and people otherwise falsely persecuted, like Iris, in The Lady Vanishes, who cannot convince anyone of what the audience knows is true-- that Mrs. Froy exists (and the audience knows she does, because we have seen her in scenes where Iris was not present), or Lila (Marion Crane’s sister), who cannot convince anyone she saw Norman’s mother in the house.
Witness for the Prosecution was not Hitchcock’s cup of tea at all.