It Happened One Decade: An Analysis of Screwball Comedy's Humour through its History, Characteristics and Masterpieces: It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby

Few genres have proven to be as versatile and as expressive of social and political change as comedy, and within this privileged category, the screwball undoubtedly occupies a prominent place. Conventionally limited in the decade between the '30s and the 40's but resulting incredibly influential; dwelling with the prohibition of mentioning sex when discussing romance; swinging between the crisis of the Great Depression and the optimism of the New Deal era; this sub-genre – just like the name suggests, referring to one of baseball's most difficult and spectacular pitches – is unpredictable, creative and incredibly fun. But most of all, with its authors and interprets, it has satirized, challenged and provoked our idea of love, using fast-paced humorous dialogues which above all reach the highest level of the art of allusion: as efficiently summarized in Andrew Sarris's definition, “sex comedies without the sex”. This paper will examine the social, cultural and historical background of the Screwball comedy genre through three examples of its most critically successful films -It Happened One Night (1934), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Bringing Up Baby (1938). Moreover, this study will also analyze screwball comedy's humor and defining aesthetic features: social satire; battle of the sexes; expression of sexual tension through verbal fight; frenetic pace; coexistence of elements of sophisticated comedy, slapstick and farce; encounter and clash between social classes; initially antagonistic protagonists who fall in love; bizarre and paradoxical events; unpredictability; presence of disguise and masquerade. Furthermore, it will also critique the concept of the male gaze in Capra, Hawks and Cukor’s female characters while discussing the ending of classic screwball comedy and its legacy in modern cinema.