Comedy

This chapter deals with masters of that most difficult genre to define: comedy. Focusing on an array of practitioners, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, and Pedro Almodóvar, the chapter seeks to define by analysis of the work of five directors whose output, while different from each other in form, content, and era, still practice in the general umbrella of comedy. The chapter points to the formal as well as the thematic aspects of these filmmakers, from the slipping and falling of Keaton and Chaplin to the sophisticated nonsense of Sturges, the sexual intrigue of Wilder, and the astonishing lightness of being in Almodóvar.