The course will be concerned with the nature of comedy, how it is manifested in film and how it encompasses various modes, like: satire, irony, parody and the grotesque. Films screened will be representative of the comic traditions: the slapstick silent comics (Chaplin, Keaton); screwball comedies (Hawks, Capra, Sturges); the French stylists (Rene Clair, Jacques Tati); contemporary American comedies (from the Marx Bros. to Woody Allen); and international comedies (Bunuel, Almodovar, Terry Gilliam).