VM412-9: American Film Comedy Research Guide
This guide is designed to help you find information on the theory of comedy and comedy in American films, as well as on specific movies and directors associated with comedy.
Background Information
Books
Journal and Magazine Articles
Background Information
Look in the Reference area for these books, which are good places to start for background about concepts, directors, or movies. Note that the call number for Film Comedy in general (for Reference and Main Stacks books) is PN 1995.9 .C55.
Pendergast, Tom and Sara. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. 4 v. [X] PN1997.8 .I58 2000.
American Film Comedy. [X] PN1995.9 .C55 S48 1994.
Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. [X] PN1995.9 .C55 L34 1987
The Screwball Comedy Films. [X] PN1995.9 .C55 B97 1991.
Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. [X] PN 1968 .U5 S37 1994
The Vaudevillians. [X] PN 1968 .U5 S38
Books
A number of books on the theory of comedy and film comedy have been placed on reserve, and are listed below. In addition, you may want to search the Library Catalog for other items on specific directors (e.g., Brooks, Mel), films (e.g., Some Like it Hot), or concepts (e.g., Comedy Films).
Selected Books on American Film Comedy and Related Subjects
Matthews, Nicole. Comic Politics: Gender in Hollywood Comedy after the New Right. Manchester : Manchester University Press, c2000.
Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
McCaffrey, Donald W. Assault on Society: Satirical Literature to Film. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1992.
Beach, Christopher. Class, Language, and American Film Comedy. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Gehring, Wes D. Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy: Charting the Difference. Lanham : Scarecrow Press, 2002.
Gehring, Wes D. Parody as Film Genre: "Never Give a Saga an Even Break". Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1999.
Staples, Shirley. Male-female Comedy Teams in American Vaudeville: 1865-1932. Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, c1984.
Lust, Annette. From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond. Lanham, MD. : Scarecrow Press, 2000.
Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy. Langhorn, PA : Gordon and Breach, c1994.
Comedy : new perspectives. New York : New York Literary Forum, 1978.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1984.
Stallybrass, Peter. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1986.
Classical Hollywood Comedy. New York : Routledge, 1995.
Journal and Magazine Articles
Citation Indexes
These databases are focused solely on the film literature, and each have many articles on comedy in films. Since they do not contain the full article, you will have to track down the text of the article from the citations. Fortunately, the Library subscribes to many of the major film journals.
Film and Television Literature Index
Provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 300 film and television publications, and selected coverage of 300 more. After searching, narrow down your results by using the subject headings on the left side. Does provide links to some full text.FIAF International Film Archive
Contains more than 260,000 article references from over 300 academic and popular film periodicals. 1972 to the present. Try searching "comedies" and and some other concept (e.g., "screwball" or "romantic") as subjects or keywords.Film Index International
Good bibliography for people (directors, stars, etc.) and for films. Look for articles under "References," at the end of each entry. You can search by person or by film.Film Literature Index
Contains over half a million citations covering 150 film and television journals from 1976 to 2001.
Full-text Sources
Though these databases have the full text of articles, they do not contain nearly as many film journals. It also may be more difficulty to narrow down your search to only those having to do with film. But that may be good if you are looking for more general resources on comedy theory.
Academic Search Premier
A very large multi-disciplinary database that contains articles from a wide variety of publications - from general interest magazines like Time and Newsweek to more scholarly research journals such as Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound and Journal of Popular Film & Television.JSTOR and Project MUSE
These databases have the full-text of some great scholarly film journals like Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Discourse, Film Quarterly, The Moving Image, Public Culture, The Velvet Light Trap, and Wide Angle.International Index to the Performing Arts
This database has the full-text of American Cinematographer, Cineaste, Cinema Journal, Film Criticism, and the Journal of Popular Culture.
