Screwball comedy is a genre which was at the height of its popularity in the 1930`s and 1940`s. Unlike slapstick, screwball is known mostly for its verbosity - most of the humour is not in sight gags or other forms of physical comedy, but in the words the actors say. A typical screwball comedy may contain a number of common attributes: "wacky and oddball behaviour"*, or "role manipulation, either between the sexes or between the classes"*. These characteristics are usually present in the context of a romantic story, where the leads realize, despite tensions and hindrances of all kinds, that they were meant for each other.
The genre was a favourite of a number of directors, from Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, and Leo McCarey*. Howard Hawks was another practitioner of the genre. Hawks was responsible for a number of classic comedies, from His Girl Friday and I was a Male War Bride, to Bringing Up Baby. The films I`ve viewed are His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby, and these two films represent the pinnacle of the genre. Both of them are fast-paced and frantic, rarely slowing down that pace for any hint of seriousness. Certainly, these movies ought to be seen as the beginnings of such lunatic comedy as can be found in movies by Jim Carrey and others. As in a Carrey film, the Hawks pictures employ many implausible and wacky situations, albeit not of the gross-out nature of, say, Dumb and Dumber. The wacky situations in the Hawks comedies include the events surrounding Katherine Hepburn`s leopard, Baby, in Bringing Up Baby, and the sorry situation of Rosalind Russel`s fiance in His Girl Friday, who constantly is set up by the jealous ex-husband Cary Grant to be arrested for numerous petty crimes. What makes these classics better (and more tasteful) then the current pictures is the sheen of sophistication over the silliness. With actors like Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Bellamy, and others as the leads, you know you are not entering the world of the Farrelly Brothers.
Bringing Up Baby is the earliest of the two films I`ve viewed (1938), and is definitely the wackiest of the two. Cary Grant is a scientist, attempting to complete a skeleton of a particular dinosaur. Grant is also about to be married to an equally scientific mind; she is, in fact, prepared to sacrifice the honeymoon in order to get straight back to work. On this particular day, Grant attempts to impress a representative of a rich person in order to secure a one million dollar grant to the museum. The deed is done in a suitable arena for business - the golf course. But this is where the havoc begins.
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