British Comedy Cinema

This work explores the history of British comedy from silent slapstick and satire to contemporary romantic comedy. The essays include case studies on prominent personalities, and exploration of production cycles and studio output. Films discussed in the work include Sing As We Go, The Ladykillers, Trouble in Stone, The Carry Ons, Till Death Us Do Part, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Notting Hill, and Sex Lives of the Potato Men.

British comedy cinema has been a mainstay of domestic production since the beginning of the last Century and arguably the most popular and important genre in British film history. This edited volume will offer the first comprehensive account of the rich and popular history of British comedy cinema from silent slapstick and satire to contemporary romantic comedy. Using a loosely chronological approach, essays cover successive decades of the 20th and 21st Century with a combination of case studies on key personalities, production cycles and studio output along with fresh approaches to issues of class and gender representation. It will present new research on familiar comedy cycles such as the Ealing Comedies and Carry On films as well as the largely undocumented silent period along with the rise of television spin offs from the 1970s and the development of animated comedy from 1915 to the present. Films covered include: St Trinians, A Fish Called Wanda, Brassed Off, Local Hero, The Full Monty, Four Lions and In the Loop. Contributors: Melanie Bell, Alan Burton, James Chapman, Richard Dacre, Ian Hunter, James Leggott, Sharon Lockyer, Andy Medhurst, Lawrence Napper, Tim O’Sullivan, Laraine Porter, Justin Smith, Sarah Street, Peter Waymark, Paul Wells

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This text critically examines significant developments within British cinema during the 1990s and explores the interactions in comedy and drama in a number of key films from the period.

A Chorus of Raspberries is the first full-length academic study of one of the most popular, profitable and persistent genres in British cinema. It redraws the map of British film history by arguing that comedy was the most successful, and perhaps the most important, genre of the 1930s, and that the very qualities which ensured the comedy film's low status are also its particular strengths. In the process it uncovers a whole tradition of popular cinema which criticism has relegated to the sidelines of history. The book looks in detail at the work of a number of key stars, including George Formby, Gracie Fields, The Crazy Gang, Cicely Courtneidge and Ernie Lotinga, revealing the wide range of comic styles and meanings they produced in seemingly formulaic films. It unearths a host of previously forgotten but notable films, and an important tradition in British popular culture, tracing the roots of the genre to its music-hall beginnings. Includes George Formby, Gracie Fields, The Crazy Gang First full-length study of the subject Will appeal to those studying popular culture and film history Market: Scholars and students of film studies, popular culture, media studies, especially those taking courses on British cinema. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in twentieth-century popular culture and British cinema.

Over 39 chapters The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History offers a comprehensive and revisionist overview of British cinema as, on the one hand, a commercial entertainment industry and, on the other, a series of institutions centred on economics, funding and relations to government. Whereas most histories of British cinema focus on directors, stars, genres and themes, this Companion explores the forces enabling and constraining the films’ production, distribution, exhibition, and reception contexts from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The contributors provide a wealth of empirical and archive-based scholarship that draws on insider perspectives of key film institutions and illuminates aspects of British film culture that have been neglected or marginalized, such as the watch committee system, the Eady Levy, the rise of the multiplex and film festivals. It also places emphasis on areas where scholarship has either been especially productive and influential, such as in early and silent cinema, or promoted new approaches, such as audience and memory studies.

This collection offers an overview of British TV comedies, ranging from the beginnings of sitcoms in the 1950s to the current boom of 'Britcoms'. It provides in-depth analyses of major comedies, systematically addressing their generic properties, filmic history, humour politics and cultural impact.