About

‘Hollywood Screwballs’ brings together a selection of canonical classics, formative films, and revisionist revitalisations of the screwball comedy genre. The program will be presented exclusively from rare 35mm prints sourced from film archives around the world.

The screwball comedy is one of the great treasures of American cinema. Emerging in the 1930s, these fast-talking farces subverted the conventions of romantic comedies with acid-tongued wit and slapstick silliness.

The genre rose to prominence amid the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, with audiences responding to the intermingling of metropolitan glamour and acerbic class commentary. Famously described by critic Andrew Sarris as ‘sex comedies without the sex’, screwball comedies had their would-be couples evading the censorious Hays Code with artful innuendo and risqué repartee.

The immense success of these films fostered the iconic status of many of their stars, including Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck. They also proved fertile behind the camera, propelling the careers of legendary writers and directors such as Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges.

After a decade of popularity, screwball comedies declined in prevalence, though their influence remains woven through many subsequent forms of screen comedy. Filmmakers raised on the golden age of the genre would also revisit its distinct characteristics in later decades, blending screwball sensibilities with modern cinematic stylings.

Talk: Til Death Do Us Repartee
11.00am, Sat 29 July 2023 | Free, no bookings required
New York-born, Melbourne-based writer and film critic Keva York explores the origins and evolution of the fast-talking and fiercely witty genre of the screwball comedy in this free talk.

Tickets
General $10 | Concession $9 | Members $8
Buy 5+ tickets to receive a 10% discount.
Buy 10 tickets to receive a 20% discount.

Program curated by Robert Hughes, Australian Cinémathèque.

QAGOMA acknowledges the generous assistance of the National National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra; the British Film Institute, London; NBCUniversal Archives & Collections, Los Angeles; the Paramount Pictures Archive, Los Angeles; the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Los Angeles; the Warner Archive, Los Angeles; George Eastman Museum, Rochester; and the Library of Congress, Washington DC in providing materials for this program.