http://www.filmsite.org/comedyfilms.html

I chose to study this article as it talks about the type of comedies, what they include and when they were most popular. The article was written by Tim Dirks who is part of the American Movie Classics Company and explains the types of comedy, using some famous comedy films as examples.

The text talks about several types of comedy including Slapstick, Deadpan, Verbal Comedy, Screwball, Black or Dark Comedy and Parody/Spoof which also touches on Satire, Lampoon and Farce Comedy.

The text explains when Slapstick comedy was first introduced into films and what it is:

"Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films, since they didn't need sound to be effective, and they were popular with non-English speaking audiences in metropolitan areas."

"This is primitive and universal comedy with broad, aggressive, physical, and visual action, including harmless or painless cruelty and violence, horseplay, and often vulgar sight gags (e.g., a custard pie in the face, collapsing houses, a fall in the ocean, a loss of trousers or skirts, runaway crashing cars, people chases, etc)."

The text also gives some examples of slapstick during the 1920s:

"It was typical of the films of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, W. C. Fields, The Three Stooges, the stunts of Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923), and Mack Sennett's silent era shorts (for example, the Keystone Kops)." - I could use one of these examples as my irst film to study to see how films were when the comedy genre began.

We are then told that "Slapstick evolved and was reborn in the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s."

"The word 'screwball' denotes lunacy, craziness, eccentricity, ridiculousness, and erratic behaviour."

Screwball comedy was introduced after films with sound were introduced and verbal comedy became popular, the test says verbal comedy was:
"classically typified by the cruel verbal wit of W. C. Fields, the sexual innuendo of Mae West, or the verbal absurdity of dialogues in the Marx Brothers films, or later by the self-effacing, thoughtful humour of Woody Allen's literate comedies."

Black or Dark Comedy was introduced in the 1960s, they are "dark, sarcastic, humorous, or sardonic stories that help us examine otherwise ignored darker serious, pessimistic subjects such as war, death, or illness." - I think that this type of comedy relates to the time in which it began as the 60s is famous for its many protests about anti-war and "peace and love".

"Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic satire from a script by co-writer Terry Southern,  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) that spoofed the insanity of political and military institutions with Peter Sellers in a triple role (as a Nazi scientist, a British major, and the US President)" - one of two greatest black comedy films ever made according to the text

Parody or spoof comedies are "specific types of comedy (also called put-ons, send-ups, charades, lampoons, take-offs, jests, mockumentaries, etc.) that are usually a humorous or anarchic take-off that ridicules, impersonate, puncture, scoff at, and/or imitate (mimic) the style, conventions, formulas, characters (by caricature), or motifs of a serious work, film, performer, or genre" - this type of comedy has been around since the 1930s and is still used in modern day films.

"This category may also include these widely diverse forms of satire - usually displayed as political or social commentary"