Screwball Comedies

The original screwball comedies were made in the era between the onset of the Depression and the end of World War II. Ed Sikov offers a definition of screwball comedy that emphasizes the sexual relationships involved, with madcap comedy surrounding the onset and development of romance. Usually, he says, the Hollywood process of "meet cute," of male and female meeting in some interesting way, is only the beginning for a further process of antagonism leading eventually to romance:

In the world of screwball comedy, there is one primary axiom: Hatred is no reason to give up on a relationship. Just because two people seem to despise each other doesn't mean they're not in love. It could, on the contrary, provide the final proof of a couple's delight in one another, their passion, devotion, and joy (Sikov 15-16).

Sikov finds that this new genre developed in the late 1930s as a response to social conditions and a shift awa

. . .
en Harry Met Sally presents the working out of one particular relationship, and while it may have social implications, they are not as challenging to the psychology of either character as would have bene the case in the 1930s. The essential elements of the screwball comedy found in both films are a man and a woman who meet and do not like one another, and while every member of the audience knows intuitively that these two will get together, they do not. They may fight it, or they may ignore it as a possibility. In the end, though, they are destined for one another and have to come to grips with it. In the Hawks film, the man and woman come from different social milieu, one an heiress with all the peculiarities and social attitudes of the rich, and the other an intellectual more dedicated to his work than anything else. She is the flighty one who does not take anything too seriously, and he is the dedicated one who takes his work seriously and ignores everything else. There is a social chasm between them that is breached here not just by attraction but also by a leopard, the latter the madcap element that was strong in the 1930s and that often attached itself to the rich heiress who had more money than she knew how to handle.
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Approximate Word count = 1637
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)