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Films

Film Comedy

What became of the raucous laughter and inspired slapstick anarchism of the early silent comedies? Our regular film commentator Thomas Wartenberg traces the trajectory of film comedy from laughter to romance.

In a brilliant essay entitled, ‘Comedy’s Greatest Era’, James Agee bemoaned sound comedy’s inability to deliver the raucous laughter he found so appealing in silent comedy. I was reminded of this critical judgment as I perused the American Film Institutes list of the 100 greatest American film comedies, for there were very few silent films on it. (The list is available at www.afionline.org/100laughs).

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