This blog is devoted to classic Hollywood film comedies from 1930-1945 (more or less). I am writing my quick-hit impressions of and notes on films I watch in my research. The art and philosophy of comedy are my passion, film comedy especially, and film comedy of the 1930s and ’40s, most especially. I believe in comedy like a religion. Watching comedic plays and films is a kind of sacrament.
Comedy is perhaps the most enduring literary art. Its basic forms have persisted for at least 2,500 years in the western world — and probably longer elsewhere. It thrives in market towns and great market cities — Athens, Rome, London, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, and 20th century New York and LA — wherever people from many backgrounds and identities mix and learn to get along. More than any genre of literature, it affirms play and freedom. Consider this blog a place of offerings for the Comic Spirit.
I have studied and taught Comedy as an artform for many years, but I’m still a newby when it comes to the media ecology of classical Hollywood. I’m drawn to that period partly because it connects me with my parents’ generation, and partly because of its amazing creative energy. Classic Hollywood probably produced more comedies — and more memorable ones — than any previous era.
— Istvan Csicsery-Ronay