Comedy of Manners You Rang, M’Lord? / Photo Credit: BBC - UKTV Play
A LOOK AT COMEDY OF MANNERS
FILMS. (In the Entertainment industry.)
Comedy of Manners
Comedy of manners, witty, cerebral form of dramatic comedy that depicts and
often satirizes the manners and affectations of a contemporary society. A
comedy of manners is concerned with social usage and the question of whether or
not characters meet certain social standards.
The comedy of manners, also called anti sentimental
comedy, is a form of comedy that satirizes the manners and affectations of
contemporary society and questions societal standards. ... A comedy of manners
often sacrifices the plot, which usually centers on some scandal, to witty
dialogue and sharp social commentary.
A comedy of manners satirizes the manners and affectations
of a social class, often represented by stock characters. Also, satirical
comedy-drama & the plot is often concerned with an illicit love affair or
some other scandal. However, the plot is generally less important for its
comedic effect than its witty dialogue. This form of comedy has a long
ancestry, dating back at least as far as Much Ado about Nothing created by
William Shakespeare.
Early examples
The comedy of manners has been employed by Roman satirists
since as early as the first century BC. Horace's Satire 1.9 is a prominent
example, in which the persona is unable to express his wish for his companion
to leave, but instead subtly implies so through wit.
William Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing might be
considered the first comedy of manners In England, but the genre really
flourished during the Restoration period. Restoration comedy, which was
influenced by Ben Jonson's comedy of humors, made fun of affected wit and
acquired follies of the time. The masterpieces of the genre were the plays of
William Wycherley (The Country Wife, 1675) and William Congreve (The Way of the
World, 1700). In the late 18th century Oliver Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer,
1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Rivals, 1775; The School for Scandal,
1777) revived the form.
More recent examples
The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting, and
epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In the
20th century, the comedy of manners reappeared in the plays of the British
dramatists Noël Coward (Hay Fever, 1925) and Somerset Maugham. Other early
twentieth-century examples of comedies of manners include George Bernard Shaw's
1913 play Pygmalion (later adapted into the musical My Fair Lady), E. M.
Forster's A Room with a View, and the Jeeves and Wooster stories of P. G.
Wodehouse.
The term comedy of menace, which British drama critic
Irving Wardle based on the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace
(1958), by David Campton, is a jocular play-on-words derived from the
"comedy of manners" (menace being manners pronounced with a somewhat
Judeo-English accent). Pinter's play The Homecoming has been described as a
mid-twentieth-century "comedy of manners".
Other more recent examples include Kazuo Ishiguro's The
Remains of the Day, Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, Douglas Carter Beane's As
Bees in Honey Drown, The Country Club, and The Little Dog Laughed. In Boston
Marriage (1999), David Mamet chronicles a sexual relationship between two
women, one of whom has her eye on yet another young woman (who never appears,
but who is the target of a seduction scheme). Periodically, the two women make
their serving woman the butt of haughty jokes, serving to point up the satire
on class. Though displaying the verbal dexterity, one associates with both the
playwright and the genre, the patina of wit occasionally erupts into shocking
crudity.
Comedies of manners have been a staple of British film and
television. The Carry-On films are a direct descendant of the comedy of manners
style, and elements of the style can be found in The Beatles' films A Hard
Day's Night and Help! Television series by David Croft in collaboration with
Jimmy Perry and later with Jeremy Lloyd are also notable examples of the genre.
These notably include You Rang, M’Lord? Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and
Are You Being Served? Television series such as George and Mildred, Absolutely
Fabulous, The Young Ones, and The League of Gentlemen also contain many
elements of the genre. Though less common as a genre in American television,
series such as Frasier, Ugly Betty, Soap, and The Nanny are also comedies of
manners.
References
& Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, WikiBooks, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked
In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, History Channel, Film Daily, New York
Film Academy, The Balance, Careers Hub, The Numbers, Film Maker, Film Site, TV
Guide Magazine, Blurb, Media Match, Quora, Creative Skill Set, Chron, Investopedia,
Variety, No Film School, WGA, BBC, Daily Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample
Resume, How Stuff Works, Studio Binder, Career Trend, Producer's Code of
Credits, Truity, Production Hub, Producers Guild of America, Film Connection, Variety,
Wolf Crow, Get In Media, Production Beast, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, UCAS, Frankenbite,
Realty 101, Careers Hub, Screen Play Scripts, Elements of Cinema, Script
Doctor, ASCAP, Film Independent, Any Possibility, CTLsites, NYFA, Future Learn,
VOM Productions, Mad Studios, Rewire, DP School, Film Reference, DGA, IATSE, ASC,
MPAA, HFPA, MPSE, CDG, AFI, Box Office Mojo, Rotten Tomatoes, Indie Film
Hustle, The Numbers, Netflix, Vimeo, Instagram, Pinterest, Metacritic, Hulu, Reddit,
NATO, Mental Floss, Slate, Locations Hub, Film Industry Statistics, Guinness World
Records, The Audiopedia, Imagination for People,
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Comedy of Manners You Rang, M’Lord? / Photo Credit: BBC - UKTV Play
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