‘The Screwball Comedy’ and Frank
Capra’s It Happened One Night
Genre Definition and a Film Analysis
What is the screwball comedy?
• No general agreement among film historians
on what constituted a screwball comedy or
what films belong to the category.
• General agreement, however, is about the
period in which the genre prospered - between
1934 and 1938.
What is the screwball comedy?
• The genre began with Frank Capra’s It Happened
One Night (1934) and ended with Howard
Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938)
What is the screwball comedy?
• One constant in this genre - the teaming up of a
male star and a female star, who are entangled in
love and the centre of comical spectacle.
• Some tendencies among film historians in
understanding and identifying the genre,
screwball comedy.
• Lewis Jacobs in his The Rise of the American
Film (1939) - sociological discussion on the
frustration and energy found screwball comedies.
Jacobs ascribes it to the mood of the depression
era.
What is the screwball comedy?
• Andrew Bergman in his We’re in Money (1971)
saw screwball comedies as a reactionary genre
which was an attempt to clear up and purify
rawer and more bawdry trends in comedy opened
up by the Marx Brothers. Replaced humour.
What is the screwball comedy?
• Griffith and Mayer in their The Movies find in
the genre a new image of courtship and marriage
combined with slapstick or violent elements.
This is attributed to the frustration felt during the
economic crisis.
• While acknowledging the genre elements
identified by film historians, Sarris denies their
sociological connection to the social milieu of
the period, the Depression era in the 1930s.
What is the screwball comedy?
• Andrew Sarris approach the genre not from the
ideological but stylistic angle.
• The screwball comedy is the sex comedy
without sex.
• Constants for screwball comedies
• Hardly no children and no babies. Comedies of
courtship with propensities for quarrels and
bickerings
Presence of talented comediennes
with a variety of trick voices,
insinuating mannerisms, and
unearthly beauty. Irene Dunne,
Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, and
Barbara Stanwyck
What is the screwball comedy?
• The only actor indispensable to the genre - Cary
Grant with shy, nervous detachment and
clownish behaviour. He was often paired with
Katharine Hepburn.
It Happened One Night
• Generally considered one of the greatest romantic
comedies and the first screwball comedy. An
escapist film about an unlikely pairing of a
mismatched couple - a recently-fired newspaper
man (Gable) and a wealthy heiress (Colbert) on a
run.
It Happened One Night
• An unexpected box office hit and
won five Academy Awards,
unrivaled till One Flew over the
Cuckoos’ Nest and then The
Silence of the Lambs were
awarded with five Oscars.
It Happened One Night
• Frustrated couple Gable and Colbert –
Frustration comes from the fact that sex is
removed though it is a sex comedy.
• Debates on the arts of dunking, hitchhiking
and riding piggyback.
• Romantic leads get laugh on their own.
• What other generic