The romantic comedy
 |
The romantic comedy |
A romantic comedy, or sentimental comedy, is a type of love film that humorously portrays the love story (or at least part of the love story) between two people. It alternates humorous scenes and more serious scenes, which seek more to move.
Humor and love
The romantic comedy seeks above all to tell a love story. The typical scenario of the romantic comedy can be summed up as follows: two people who all seemingly opposed (the psycho-rigid man and the eccentric woman, the rich businessman and the poor prostitute ...) meet and will gradually fall in love with each other, but have trouble admitting it. Finally, their love triumphs over obstacles and the protagonists end together.
The romantic comedy tells a love story in a humorous way but does not constantly make you laugh. A film like Mary at all costs (which, of course, tells a love story) cannot be linked to the genre because it does not include any scene that does not try to make the viewer laugh; it's actually a pure comedy, not a romantic comedy.
The romantic comedy alternates humorous scenes and scenes seeking more to move (confers the second half of the film Pretty Woman, whose tone is much more serious than in the first part), without flirting with the drama. For example, she and he stages the love story between two people, one of whom becomes disabled as a result of an accident; such a situation is hardly imaginable in a romantic comedy, so the film will be more of a drama-comedy or a melodrama.
The romantic comedy: a codified genre
The romantic comedy usually does not seek to spare unpredictable falls: the viewer knows, from the beginning of the film (or rather, even before entering the room), that the protagonists will fall in love and that they will end up living together. The question is, how will they end up together, and that's where the writers have to be creative.
The genre includes, for example, imposed or quasi-imposed figures and character-types (the homosexual friend of the heroine in films of the last ten years, such as The Marriage of My Best Friend ).
As a genre, however, there are variants: the scenario of His mother or me! , for example, is less focused on the love story between the heroine, Charlie, and her future husband, Kevin (who are together after half an hour of the film barely), that on the rivalry between Charlie and the mother of the latter, who seeks to prevent their marriage from taking place.
The other question related to that of the genre of romantic comedy and which can not be considered as a variant is that of its history or its genealogy. If the traits of the romantic comedy that have been retained in his definition are those of the 'New Comedy' of Jonson, we must also think of his great rival Elizabethan theater: Shakespeare (and the model of the 'old comedy'). A critic like Northrop Frye points out that while in the New Comedy we witness the efforts of a young man to overcome the obstacles aroused by an old man's figure against his marriage with the young woman, in the Old Comedy ( that of Shakespeare) the focus is on the heroine who holds perhaps the key to a happy conclusion and especially undergoes something of the order of death and resurrection found in his latest comedies of Shakespeare (notably The Winter's Tale ). This distinction is echoed by Stanley Cavell in his development of the genre of remarriage comedies he spotted in seven movies comedy screwball comedies of the 1930-1940 Hollywood film.
In addition, the romantic comedy influences television, as evidenced by some TV movies, as well as several series like Clair de Lune or sitcoms Madame is served, A Nanny and Friends (to name only the most famous cases). All these series work on the same principle as the romantic comedy in the cinema: they stage, in a mostly humorous tone, the love story between their protagonists, often very different in appearance (the cold blonde and the extravagant brunette, the wealthy businesswoman and her housekeeper, the extroverted American Jewish nanny and an English businessman stuck ...).
The spectator realizes very quickly that these dissimilar protagonists will, despite their differences, end up falling in love, or at least admitting that they are in love with each other; but the question is how, and when. And that can last a long time: it will take nearly eight seasons to the protagonists of Madame is served before admitting that they are made for each other. Before that, they accidentally shared the same bed, kissed after drinking too much...
READ ALSO
No comments:
Post a Comment