Hacker News Reader

Comment by BashiBazouk | Hacker News Reader

And don't you dare even think that a fun or funny movie is high art. Why does comedy always gets the shaft?

Jacques Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton regularly feature in these kind of lists. Plus Singing in the Rain, Annie Hall, and Nouvelle Vague films that are full of jokes. Critics have always viewed comedy and high art as compatible, so I don't know what you are complaining about.

Aside from Buster Keaton's stunts lot of that is just early filming of vaudeville. Little of it was new and viewer would have been familiar with most of it from the stage. The later stuff dips it's toes in to comedy but barely gets wet. Take your examples of Singing in the Rain and Annie Hall, sure there is some comedy in both films but that is not the point of the film.

No Brooks, no Python, it's hard to take those lists seriously...

To claim that Annie Hall has just “some comedy” but does not have the point of being comedic, is bizarre. The very structure of the film is a series of gags. Woody Allen’s initial career was in comedy and in the 1970s he was still regarded mainly as a comedian. Singing in the Rain is categorized as a comedy, and what is Tati if not comedic?

Seems to be that just because these lists lack the comedy that you personally enjoy, you do a no-true-scotsman to simply deny the presence of comedy on them.

It's been a while since I seen Anne Hall but I remember to be more of romantic comedy with emphasis on the romance and characters than the jokes as opposed to a film like Sleeper that is almost a pure string of gags. Take a good look at the linked to list. Out of 250 movies, how many are anything close to pure comedies? Certainly exceptions exist but at 20 to 1, 30 to 1 I think my point stands, comedy gets the shaft...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com