Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

[Michael Kerpan]

Matt -- Have you seen What Did the Lady Forget? I find it very hard not to see this as a homage to Hollywood screwball comedies. It even has a more (quasi) western look -- as it is one of the few films that is set in a VERY well-to-do millieu.

Flavor of Green Tea over Rice revisits part of the same plot (albeit mixed with part of a script that had been banned by wartime censors). Both have surprisingly sexy finales (for Ozu, at least).

[bottlesofsmoke]

I feel like What Did the Lady Forget? (and subsequently The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice) is one where Lubitsch’s influence is most felt on Ozu, particularly The Marriage Circle and So This is Paris, both of which deal with married couples in ways less typical of screwball comedy. Labels are always tricky, but outside of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife I don’t think Lubitsch is generally considered to be screwball comedy, so maybe it is more accurate to say What Did the Lady Forget? is Ozu doing Hollywood romantic comedy?

[FrauBlucher]

This is from Wikipedia...

Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristics similar to film noir, distinguished by a female character who dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged,[1] and the two engage in a humorous battle of the sexes.[2]

The genre also featured romantic attachments between members of different social classes,[3] as in It Happened One Night (1934) and My Man Godfrey (1936).[2]

What sets the screwball comedy apart from the generic romantic comedy is that "screwball comedy puts the emphasis on a funny spoofing of love, while the more traditional romantic comedy ultimately accents love".[4] Other elements of the screwball comedy include fast-paced, overlapping repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, physical battle of the sexes, disguise and masquerade, and plot lines involving courtship and marriage.[2] Some comic plays are also described as screwball comedies.
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Other films from this period in other genres incorporate elements of the screwball comedy. For example, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The 39 Steps (1935) features the gimmick of a young couple who finds themselves handcuffed together and who eventually, almost in spite of themselves, fall in love with one another, and Woody Van Dyke's detective comedy The Thin Man (1934), which portrays a witty, urbane couple who trade barbs as they solve mysteries together. Some of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the 1930s also feature screwball comedy plots, such as The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), and Carefree (1938), which costars Ralph Bellamy. The Eddie Cantor musicals Whoopee! (1930) and Roman Scandals (1933), and slapstick road movies such as Six of a Kind (1934) include screwball elements. Some of the Joe E. Brown comedies also fall into this category, particularly Broadminded (1931) and Earthworm Tractors (1936).

[Matt]

Matt -- Have you seen What Did the Lady Forget? I find it very hard not to see this as a homage to Hollywood screwball comedies.

I have not seen it since the BFI release came out in 2010, so I’m overdue for a rewatch. As an early 1937 film, it would have come out at the same time as or earlier than iconic screwballs such as The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, and His Girl Friday, but late enough to have been influenced by Lubitsch and the earliest screwballs (such as It Happened One Night, Twentieth Century, and My Man Godfrey). Given what we know about Ozu’s voracious cinemaphilia of the time, it’s almost certain he had seen those earlier films and had enjoyed them very much.

[Michael Kerpan]

Matt -- Right, Ozu would have kept up with Hollywood right up to the point that such films were declared off-limits in the late 30s. He then had to make up for lost time when he got assigned to a post in Singapore (and spent most of his time catching up on the latest Hollywood films -- and doing ther minimum in turning out propaganda films).