Parodies, disguises and black humor: what comedies are and how they make you laugh.

The life hacker talks about different types of jokes on screens and recalls the most striking examples.

Comedies seem to be the simplest genre of cinema. Often they do not carry any deep meaning, but simply entertain. However, coming up with a good joke is not so easy. Moreover, the film should not turn into a stand-up comedy: not only textual humor is needed, but also visual techniques that will amuse the viewer.

Therefore, over the years of cinema, directors have come up with many ways to make the audience laugh: from banal slaps and falls to mixing genres. Often the techniques are interspersed with each other, but it is possible to highlight some of them in order to understand the nature of screen humor a little better.

Slapstick, or buffoonery

It was with this genre that comedy in cinema began. To explain it in simple terms, the viewer is given an on-screen analogue of a circus. The main characters play in an exaggeratedly funny way: they fall or hit each other. In fact, the word “slapstick” itself means a cracker that imitates the sound of a slap in the face.

It's not hard to guess why the jokes in the films originally looked the way they did. Firstly, the first films were silent, and short films at that. That is, they could not physically add a sufficient number of words to them; everything was limited to short inserts of text on the screen. And secondly, the first directors and actors came to cinema from the theater and circus, where they already used similar techniques.

The very first comedy is considered to be “The Watered Waterman” by the Lumière brothers in 1895. The plot is as simple as possible: a gardener is watering the plants, and behind him a boy is holding a hose. The hero tries to figure out where the water went and gets a jet of water in his face.

A little later, the masters of slapstick came to the cinema: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and, of course, Charlie Chaplin in the form of the Tramp. Most often, they directed the films themselves and played the main roles, basing the main jokes on vivid images and antics.

Slapstick is still actively used in films and TV series: in modern comedies, actors still fall and hit each other with various objects. Although it seems less and less funny.

Bizarre comedies

The genre, which appeared with the development of sound cinema, entertains with its plot, and not just with its visual techniques. That is, here we are talking more about a funny scenario.

As in a theatrical farce, the heroes of these stories find themselves in the most crazy and unexpected situations. For example, they end up from high society in a poor area. This move can be seen in the film “It Happened One Night” by Frank Capra. Regularly, authors play out the plot of “The Prince and the Pauper,” as in 1983’s “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.

But the ideas of eccentric comedy are best reflected in cross-dressing stories. Suffice it to recall the legendary film “Some Like It Hot,” where male musicians, escaping from gangsters, went on a trip with a women’s orchestra. The ending of this film is one of the most famous scenes in film history. She still makes me laugh.

Elements of the genre also appear in modern films, but they are not always used successfully. So, on the one hand, there is The Hudsucker's Henchman by the Coen brothers , which clearly refers to the classics of cinema. On the other, “Granny of Easy Virtue” with Alexander Revva in women’s clothing.

Situational comedy or sitcom

In contrast to the previous points, this humorous genre is much closer to real life. That is why it has become more widespread in serial format on television. Sitcoms are most often about ordinary people solving their everyday problems. And viewers episode by episode (sometimes for more than a decade) watch the development of the characters.

Sitcoms appeared on television back in the 40s, but the show “I Love Lucy” can be considered the first real legend. The series is built around an eccentric housewife who dreams of becoming an actress. Interestingly, the main roles were played by real-life spouses: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. And it was on the set of this project that live laughter from the audience was heard for the first time.

Sitcoms are characterized by an abundance of text-based humor with fairly simple filming. Characters are most often found in the same locations (usually at home), where they meet with friends and relatives. Although sometimes the action is mixed with the aforementioned buffoonery, as was the case with “I Love Lucy.”

The heyday of sitcoms is considered to be the 70s and 80s, when “All in the Family,” “Merry Bunch,” “The Cosby Show” came out, and “Seinfeld” started.

But at the same time, the format returns to television with enviable regularity. "Friends," which aired at the turn of the century, is considered one of the greatest TV series. And then they were replaced by “The Big Bang Theory”.

The thing is that the plots and humor of sitcoms are tied to understandable everyday situations: problems at work, relationships, disputes with friends. And almost any viewer can not only recognize themselves in one of the characters, but also use jokes from the series in real life.

Romantic comedy or romcom

This is a mixed genre, in which a melodramatic story usually coexists with good jokes. The plots of most romantic comedies are similar: two characters are attracted to each other, but they cannot be together due to external circumstances. For example, the characters are representatives of different strata of society, as in the famous “Pretty Woman”.

Or the characters at first do not like each other, but gradually a feeling of affection arises - a similar move came from the play “Much Ado About Nothing” and other works of Shakespeare.

Sometimes elements of screwball comedy are added to the action: the hero must pretend to be someone else in order to win love.

But it’s interesting that back in the 50s, directors periodically showed the other side of romantic stories. Thus, in the famous film “The Seven Year Itch” with Marilyn Monroe, the main character dreams of an affair with a beautiful neighbor. But most of the events unfold in his fantasies. And at the same time, the man imagines how his wife and son find out about his infidelity.

Absurd or surreal comedy

This genre is worth paying attention to for those who find sitcoms or romantic comedies too predictable.

Imagine that a funny scene is being played out on the screen about a married couple visiting a psychologist: the husband suspects his wife of cheating, and she has sex directly with the doctor. This is what a regular comedy would look like. But if at some point a knight enters the frame and hits the hero on the head with a chicken, absurd humor comes into play.

This, by the way, is a description of a real sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, a prominent representative of surreal comedy. Also, the authors in their numbers could not show the main joke, or punchline, but directly admit that they forgot to write it. Or some hero ran from one scene to another.

This is what absurd humor is based on: the viewer is shown something that he does not expect, and something that does not suit the plot at all.

Parody

Everything here is clear from the name. Georg Hegel also said: “History repeats itself twice - first as a tragedy, then as a farce.” The same thought may have inspired Mel Brooks, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio and the authors of other famous film parodies .

The idea is simple: the director and screenwriter take a famous film and turn the action into comedic madness. So, two years after the release of the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Robin Hood and the Men in Tights” appeared.

And in some cases, the parody became more popular than the original source. Nowadays, few people remember the disaster films “Hour Zero!” 1957 or "Airport 1975". But “Airplane!”, which satirizes such plots, still regularly appears on lists of the best comedies of all time.

The authors of such films often resort to absurd humor and anachronisms: the same Robin Hood realizes that he is an actor and shoots homing arrows. But often text jokes bordering on an oxymoron are also used. Suffice it to recall the legendary dialogue from “Airplane!”: it all starts as a harmless joke in which children imitate adults, and ends with a completely unexpected phrase.

Black comedy

The principles of this genre can be defined as follows: laugh at everything that is not customary to joke about. Death, war, illness, depression - the directors of such films turn everything into a reason to have fun.

Often it is the combination of darkness and humor that makes a story funny. For example, if you take certain elements from the 2007 film Death at a Funeral, they seem completely standard. One of the characters makes funny faces under the influence of drugs, another threatens to reveal obscene secrets. But, as the name implies, all the action takes place during funerals and wakes. Which increases the degree of madness.

In other cases, dark humor becomes a way to convey serious topics to the viewer, turning into satire. Thus, one of the greatest comedies of all time, “Doctor Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Loved the Bomb,” tells about the beginning of the war between the USSR and the USA. Moreover, it happens due to the fault of one crazy general. It is obvious that Stanley Kubrick was ironic about the real danger that frightens everyone.

Release with laughter and a combination of genres

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the postmodern era has greatly influenced the development of comedies. Directors began to mix genres more often, adding humor to action, adventure and even horror.

And often a separate character is responsible for the jokes in movies. Take Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Almost all the funniest scenes are connected with this hero.

But if Jack Sparrow directly influences the plot, then in other cases such characters appear only to amuse the viewer (they are sometimes referred to as comic relief). Suffice it to recall Pintel and Ragetti from the same “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Or Ned in the new Spider-Man films, Benji in the Mission: Impossible franchise and many others.

And sometimes the picture itself is turned into an unexpected mixture of genres, in which a serious plot is adjacent to a humorous idea. A prime example is “President Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” The picture does not look like a parody, but it is difficult to take seriously the scenes where the famous historical figure kills bloodsuckers with an ax.

Unfortunately, it is believed that this approach has partly killed the purely comedy genre: viewers have enough humor in other films.

Do classic slapsticks still make you laugh or do you prefer absurd humor? Tell us in the comments about your favorite comedies and funny scenes from them!