by Megan Robinson, Staff Writer

In our current age of unbearable heat and strikes for workers’ rights at the forefront of everyone’s mind, many of us find ourselves in the mood to laugh. We want more than just a laugh, though; rather, the reflection of ourselves on the screen represents just how absurdly silly our lives truly are. After all, look at the success of Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023), with its frenetic energy and tackling of feminism in the modern age, with a its current box office gross well over $1 billion just weeks after release. The film falls right in line with an Old Hollywood tradition — the screwball comedy. 

The funniest genre in Hollywood’s golden age, the screwball comedy features high-energy dialogue between witty actors of the opposite sex, class consciousness of Depression-era concerns, and sexual innuendo so steamy it could only be uttered by couples soon to marry (or remarry). If modern films like Barbie, or the current state of the world, have you itching for more fast-paced comedies, I’ve compiled a list of where to get started, which is totally not biased based on my personal tastes in actors.

The Genre’s Origins

It Happened One Night (dir. Frank Capra, 1934)

Anyone who watches It Happened One Night today might be surprised to see just how modern it really is. Every romantic comedy trope you can think of is here, from its bickering to situations in which they always end up sitting next to each other on a bus or about to kiss to even jilting someone at the altar, marking the birthplace of so many of the genre’s staples. Watching it feels familiar and foreign at the same time; the depiction of class divide in America between a rich socialite and a hardy journalist feels all too prescient, but elements like Claudette Colbert’s fashion transport you to the 1930s. Though, as YouTuber Be Kind Rewind remarks, the film “doesn’t quite epitomize the frantic energy for which the genre later became famous,” it’s still a certified classic. It didn’t sweep the Academy Awards for nothing!

My Man Godfrey (dir. Gregory La Cava, 1936)

Screwballs may have their origin in 1934, but, as Olympia Kiriakou writes for MUBI Notebook, “the genre did not come to be known as ‘screwball comedy’ until mid-1936” when Variety used the phrase to describe Carole Lombard’s performance in My Man Godfrey. While Capra’s creation of the genre features Depression-era America with two likable leads on opposite sides of the class divide, La Cava’s film makes more of a mockery of the rich with a pitch-perfect performance by Lombard as the socialite du jour Irene Bullock. With William Powell opposite Lombard as “forgotten man” turned butler Godfrey thought of as merely a pawn in a chaotic game until love rears its head, you have all the makings of a classic screwball on your hands.

Next Steps: For a kind of combination of these two picks, watch Twentieth Century (dir. Howard Hawks, 1934). Released the same year as It Happened One Night, the frantic film will satisfy anyone looking for more inane humor than what’s found in Capra’s film or anyone who finds themselves captivated by Lombard.

Cary and Katherine

Bringing Up Baby (dir. Howard Hawks, 1938)

My college roommates and I would host movie nights over the past year, and one of my picks was Bringing Up Baby. When I tell you that they were literally falling off the couch and crying with laughter, I mean it. The film was initially a financial bomb, as Sheila O’Malley describes for Criterion: “The shoot ran long and went over budget, so RKO lost money on the unpredictable ticket sales,” with Katherine Hepburn being labeled “box office poison.” It’s impossible to imagine this film flopping, though; Cary Grant breaks the confident type he’d become known for and excels as a stiff and nerdish paleontologist, while Hepburn falls right into her ditzy socialite role with ease. It’s the funniest film on this list, and probably in my top films of all-time, with its slapstick farce far outwitting the competition.

Grant and Hepburn worked together on four films throughout their careers, with three of them being staples of the screwball genre (broken down here by Turner Classic Movies). Friends in real life, their chemistry as performers is off the charts; while Bringing Up Baby isn’t romantic per se, they bounce off each other effortlessly. It may not be as interested in gender and class politics as other films on this list, but Bringing Up Baby is pure, unbridled fun.

Holiday (dir. George Cukor, 1938)

If you ask how to get into Old Hollywood films, most lovers of the time period will tell you to watch another Grant and Hepburn collaboration, The Philadelphia Story (dir. George Cukor, 1940). They wouldn’t be wrong, but I want to be unique. So instead, watch Holiday. It calls back to the class conscious roots of the genre, with Grant put off by the millionaire heiress he’s set to marry (Doris Nolan) and instead falling for her sister, played by Hepburn. The two have a palpable romantic chemistry, with a waltz and a New Year’s kiss keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Next Steps: Watch The Philadelphia Story. Obviously.

The End of an Era

The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941)

In his book You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory, 1927-1949, Andrew Sarris referred to the screwball genre as “sex comedies without the sex.” Characters scheme, fall on top of each other, and speak without taking a breath all in the place of sex. But all of this is just as sexy, and no film makes that clearer than The Lady Eve. Barbara Stanwyck is a pitch-perfect seductress and thief, and Henry Fonda a phenomenally rich buffoon constantly bewitched by her charms. I watched it with my father who, upon seeing this scene where Stanwyck caresses Fonda’s hair, was shocked at the lurid energy between the two — Sturges is considered a bona fide comedic genius, but his love of innuendo is just as entertaining.

To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)

While there is no film that acts as the definitive end of the genre, To Be or Not to Be comes close. Lubitsch was a master of the craft, with his pre-Code comedies still just as masterfully shot and entertaining today as back then. Here, he turns his camera to the threat of Nazis. It’s a film directly about the power of art and the foolishness of fascism, with an ensemble cast featuring Lombard, Jack Benny, and more as a troupe of actors devastated by the occupation of Poland. Of course, it’s still hilarious, but it also takes a firm stance against anti-Semitism in a pivotal scene with a great reworking of a Shakespearean monologue. It’s the final film of screwball queen Lombard, and she goes out with a bang.

Next Steps: If you can’t get enough of Stanwyck, try Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Hawks, 1941). Yes, I may be putting a lot of emphasis on the actors, but Hawks was a king of filmmaking, and screwballs were just another genre he mastered. As for pre-Code Lubitsch? Try Trouble in Paradise (1932) or Design for Living (1933).

A Modern Retelling

What’s Up, Doc? (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)

While the screwball may have fallen out of fashion after the 1930s, that doesn’t mean it ever truly died. Enter What’s Up Doc? with Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand recreating the Grant-Hepburn dynamic of Bringing Up Baby. It’s zany, with a case of mixed-up luggage leading Streisand’s Judy Maxwell and O’Neal’s Howard Bannister on a roller coaster ride across San Francisco. In fact, it’s more or less Bringing Up Baby, but with updated New Hollywood humor and fashion. It even features Madeline Kahn in one of her earliest performances, and right away you can tell she’s a star. Really, this could be the perfect place to start if you’re, sadly, put off by black and white movies or trans-Atlantic accents.