A provocative form of film humor dealing with subject matter that society generally finds troubling or distasteful. It’s no wonder, therefore, that black comedy almost always makes audiences uneasy and disturbed even as they laugh. Black comedy, or dark humor, often revolves around issues of death and dying, but it can also touch upon taboo sexual, social, and political issues. What ultimately differentiates black comedy from farce is that it doesn’t undercut or apologize for itself at the end; to be a full-blooded black comedy, a film must have the courage of its convictions right through to its darkly comic finale.
The first Hollywood film to approach black comedy was ERNST LUBITSCH’s classic 1942 movie about Nazis in Poland, To Be or Not to Be. Screamingly funny, the film was dark indeed, with a comic character known by the epithet “Concentration Camp Erhardt.” Despite a happy ending, the film was condemned as being in bad taste, and it bombed when it was released in the early years of World War II. Another black comedy that opened during the war (although it wasn’t about the war at all) became a huge hit. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), based on a hit play of the same name, depicted two sweet old lady murderers who happily buried their victims in their cellar. Made by FRANK CAPRA before he became involved in the war effort, and released long after it was made, the film was arguably the first genuine Hollywood black comedy.
Black comedies have rarely been made by Hollywood studios, which have preferred to entertain rather than disturb their audiences. Only an independent filmmaker such as CHARLIE CHAPLIN could have made such a dark and deeply chilling comedy as Monsieur Verdoux (1947), in which he comically murders rich old women for their money. Considered a masterpiece today, the film was reviled at the time it opened.
The 1950s was a time of complacency in America in all manner of things, including black comedy. It wasn’t until STANLEY KUBRICK made Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in 1964 that black comedy was reborn both critically and commercially. The film remains one of the most successful black comedies in movie history. Other black comedies followed but without the same reception at the box office. The Loved One (1965), a film version of Evelyn Waugh’s novel about Hollywood’s peculiar burial customs, drew a great deal of controversy but didn’t draw a large crowd.
If there was a golden age of black comedy, it was probably during the 1970s, and it began with the low-budget release of two films that quickly became cult classics, Where’s Poppa? (1970) and Harold and Maude (1971). By the end of the decade, black comedies were being made with big budgets and major stars and were big box office, as evidenced by the success of such films as the Burt Reynolds movie The End (1978). The commercial viability of black comedies has spurred their production, making the genre far more accessible in the 1980s, as exemplified by such movies as Ruthless People (1986) and Throw Momma from the Train (1987). One might even begin to consider black comedy the normal comic fare of our time.
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1. Robert Aldrich produced many social and political movies
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