American Humor - Film

Film

The very first movie to be produced was Thomas Edison's kinetoscope of his assistant Fred Ott in Record of a Sneeze. This could also be considered the first to show a comedic element.

During the era of silent films in the 1920s, comedic films began to appear in significant numbers. These were mainly focused on visual humor, including slapstick and burlesque. In America, prominent clown-style actors of the silent era include Charlie Chaplin (although he was born in England), Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy) (Stan Laurel being British), Fatty Arbuckle, the Marx Brothers and other names were significant in the first decades of American cinema humor.

Many early film directors in the US were born elsewhere. This is true of one of the most noted early comedy directors in Hollywood, Billy Wilder. That said, American born directors like Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and George Cukor also were major film comedy directors in the 1940s. In the 1960s to 1970s Woody Allen and Mel Brooks gained note becoming two of the most appreciated of American film comedy directors. In the 1980s Christopher Guest, Carl Reiner, and the Coen brothers emerged as significant directors or writers in American film comedy. Added to this several "brother duos" have been of significance in American film like The Zucker brothers, the Coen brothers, and The Farrelly brothers. In the last ten years Kevin Smith, Jay Roach, Tom Shadyac, and Alexander Payne have garnered notice as film directors whose work is often humorous, if at times darkly so in the case of Payne. Some of the aforementioned directors, particularly Woody Allen and the Coen brothers, also do other genres of film besides comedy.