So, what movies would you include as essentials in a college-level course on comedic film? Which Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Marx films? Keep them in chronological order, or group them by the style of humor? Discuss.
Essential films:
The Gold Rush
The General
Safety First
Duck Soup
Bringing Up Baby
The Bank Dick
Singin’ in the Rain
M. Hulot’s Holiday
Some Like it Hot
Blazing Saddles
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Annie Hall
Er… Safety Last, mebbe? I haven’t seen the Bank Dick yet… and I don’t know Holiday.
I like Reality Chuck’s list, but I think I might include an evening of silent shortsm to reflect Mack Sennett, Laurel and Hardy, and Fatty Arbuckle. You have to put lots of emphasis on the silent comedies, because they were the foundation of all later comedies.
BRINGING UP BABY and DUCK SOUP are great representatives for screwball comedy genre. Heck, you could do a whole series on the screwball comedy, including WHAT’S UP, DOC? and NOISES OFF, for instance.
You don’t specify, but I assume you’re talking about American films. If you broaden, you’d certainly need to include some French comedies from the 30s, for instance, like LE MILLION or BIZARRE, BIZARRE. I confess I’m not well versed in this area.
I’m not sure that I’d include SINGIN IN THE RAIN … sure, it’s musical comedy, but it’s probably going to be shown in any series on musicals, so why duplicate when there are so many others? I might take BANDWAGON, if you want a representative of the musical comedy genre.
I think I’d include a Preston Sturges, probably SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS since it’s about making movie comedies, but PALM BEACH STORY is my favorite.
Hmmm. I’d go with Palm Beach Story. I like both of the Sturges films you mention, but Palm Beach Story is funnier, I think.
As for Musical Comedies, my personal vote is for something in the Hope-Crosby-Lamour niche … Road to Singapore, Morocco, or Utopia.
Arsenic and Old Lace, anyone?
I also rather enjoyed Ball of Fire.
I’m really having trouble filling out the 50’s and 60’s for comedies, though.
I’ll try to find the syllabus we used in one of my classes. I’ve got it around here somewhere. Be sure to include Hellzapoppin’ which was, IIRC, the first of the great zany comedies (although I seem to recall that it was on the later edge of contemporaneousness (?) with the Keystone Cops).
Can’t find much to disagree with in RealityChuck’s list. Perhaps I’d replace Blazing Saddles with Young Frankenstein as representative of the genre-send-up film. I’d love to throw in Airplane!, but it doesn’t really add anything to a study of film comedy that one of the Brooks send-ups doesn’t have, and Brooks was more pioneering.
There should probably be at least one ensemble comedy in the syllabus. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or Cannonball Run might be good examples.
I’d love to throw in the funniest movie of the last twenty years, South Park, Bigger, Longer and Uncut, but I can’t see how it would really add to a generalized study of movie comedy…what comedic sub-genre is it representative of? Musical, no doubt, and proper artistic use of vulgarity…of course, plenty of exaggerated absurdity. It does have much to teach a new generation of film students, but when planning a course, I can’t see how I’d cover all bases and find room for a uniquely funny one like that as well.
Max Linder. A lot of his short films still exist, and his daughter put out a collection of them, called The Man in the Silk Hat (also available in English, on video).
Max invented film comedy, all the silent greats acknowledged their debt to him—and his work is still funny and fresh after nearly 100 years.
I’d like to nominate You Can’t Take It with You. I saw it as a kid and I thought at the time the VanderHofs would be the ideal family to grow up in. Still do. And it won Best Picture; how many comedies can say that?
DD
Plenty. It Happened One Night, comes to mind… and I think I’d add it to my list of a comedy curriculum. Classic Rom-com.
Brief aside - I used to doodle potential course syllabuses (syllabi?) in my notebooks when I was an undergrad. How dorky is that?
Anyways, you would probably want to include some pure satire in your course - I’d suggest Dr. Strangelove (which not everyone finds funny, so you’ve got a good potential discussion topic) or Catch-22. For something more modern I’d pick Christopher Guest’s Waiting For Guffman.
It might also be interesting to look at Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine or Roger and Me and ask why humour has become such an integral part of recent documentaries.
*The Thin Man * is an absolute essential, if you ask me.
*
So Fine * (Andrew Bergman, 1981), while not without its flaws, is a very interesting commentary on film comedy: it’s a classic comic farce that takes place around a college course about . . . classic comic farces.
And depending on how far you want to bring the course into the modern world, such dark PoMo “anti-comedies” like Blue Velvet, Starship Troopers, Happiness, and *Dancer in the Dark * would provide some insight from this side of the pomo divide.
No. Nothing I ever have any authority over will have anything to do with Moore other than as an object of ridicule. See the pit thread I started just before writing this reply.
Strange timing. Dr. Strangelove though… excellent choice.
Need to include some Christopher Guest movies for sure. I’d suggest Spinal Tap, since it was the “first” of his mocumentary hits.
That is weird timing. While I’m no fan of Moore either, I still think I’d explore the documentary question if it were my class. Have you seen the recent documentaries Supersize Me or The Corporation? I don’t know if the latter has been released in the U.S. yet, but from what I’ve heard both use humour quite liberally.
It would be interesting to ask whether the use of humour drives home the point of the documentary or serves to distract from it. (Damn, why did I drop out of grad school again?)
It is a rare documentary that draws my eye. So, no. The last documentary I watched was The Love Goddesses … before that it was Gigantic : A Tale of Two Johns (They Might Be Giants).
Just to throw some modern films out, not because they are good but because they have something of value to extract from them:
American Pie
Dude, Wheres my car
It occurred to me there should be at least one Pink Panther film tossed in. Shot in the Dark, I think.
And Top Secret! should be in there, simply because it’s my favorite Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movie. 
Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, anyone?
Yeah, the Harold Lloyd one is Safety Last.
RealityChuck’s list is a good one, but some of the films are perhaps too-obvious choices. Here are a couple of alternatives:
I think having one of Jacque Tati’s films (M. Hulot’s Holiday is the best known outside France) on the list is essential. Go with Jour de Fete if the course is intended to highlight films that established a comic artist’s style, Holiday or Playtime if the selection is of a particular artist’s best work.
For W. C. Fields, I’d go back earlier, to It’s a Gift.
For Buster Keaton, how about Sherlock, Jr. or Seven Chances?
For Mel Brooks, why not The Producers?
A glaring omission, I think, is one of the Ealing comedies from the '50s. You might consider *The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers, or The Lavender Hill Mob.
And hey! Surely Animal House or Caddyshack have to be on there somewhere.
Lastly, no Coen Bros. comedies? Unthinkable. My vote goes to Raising Arizona, but The Big Lebowski wouldn’t be a bad choice either.
You know, I’m a Coen fan, but Raising Arizona just makes me cringe. I’d definitely go with Lebowski.