Historical comedy on screen : subverting history with humour / edited by Hannu Salmi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Salmi, Hannu.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Comedy films--History and criticism.

Comedy films.

Historical films--History and criticism.

Historical films.

Physical Description:

205 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Bristol, UK ; Chicago : Intellect, 2011.

Summary:

In 1893, Friedrich Engels branded History the cruelest goddess of all.' This sorrowful vision of the past is deeply rooted in the Western imagination, and history is thus presented as a joyless playground of inevitability rather than a droll world of possibilities. There are few places this is more evident than in historical cinema which tends to portray the past in a somber manner. Historical Comedy on Screen examines this tendency paying particular attention to the themes most difficult to laugh at and exploring the place where comical and historical storytelling intersect. The first scholarly book of its kind, this work emphasizes the many oft-overlooked comical renderings of history from The General (1927) to The Life of Brain(1979), and asks what they have to tell us if we begin to take them seriously. Book jacket.

Contents:

ch. 1 Introduction: The mad history of the world / Hannu Salmi

ch. 2 Buster Keaton's comedies of Southern history: Our hospitality and The general / Susan E. Linville

ch. 3 Comedians and romance: history and humour in Kalabalik / David Ludvigsson

ch. 4 From ideal husbands to Berserk Gargoyles: a survey of period comedies representing the British past in the 1950's and 1960's / Harri Kilpi

ch. 5 Forms of history in Woody Allen / Maurice Yacowar

ch. 6 No laughing matter? Comedy and the Spanish Civil War in cinema / David Archibald

ch. 7 A killer joke? World War II in post-war British television and film comedy / Rami Mähkä

ch. 8 'Holocaust-nostalgia', humour and irony: The case of pizza in Auschwitz / Hagai Dagan

ch. 9 Comedy and counter-history / Marcia Landy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781841503677

1841503673

OCLC:

738405044

Publisher Number:

99944055836