Where’s Charlie?
That was my biggest question with the list of the100 great comedies chosen for the American Film Institute’s latest celebration, “100 Years . . . 100 Laughs.” And, indeed, you have to go all the way down to No. 25 to find the first Chaplin picture picked by the AFI’s voters: his 1925 silent classic “The Gold Rush.”
How times change. A half century ago, when votes like this one were less common, “The Gold Rush” often appeared among the top five picks of lists of the greatest movies. Now Charlie, the little tramp, the most popular movie actor in the world in the 1910s and 1920s, has fallen. The artist once seen almost universally as the last century’s nonpareil movie comedian and director had been outpolled by Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and the Marx Brothers, all of whom appeared in the Top 10 of the AFI list and had multiple selections (five for Woody and the Marxes, three for Brooks).
For that matter, Chaplin had four movies on the list, including “Modern Times,” “The Great Dictator” and “City Lights.” But clearly his one-time unchallenged pre-eminence, and the universal delight his exquisite impudence, poignancy and sublime pantomime once inspired, were on hiatus. “The Gold Rush” was not even the most popular silent comedy on the list. That honor belonged to Chaplin’s old rival and admirer, stone-faced Buster Keaton, who took 18th place with his 1927 Civil War chase masterpiece, “The General.”
But downplaying Chaplin doesn’t hurt the list, perhaps the AFI’s strongest yet. Let others carp about these now seemingly regular polls, which began with “100 Years . . . 100 Movies” and continued with “100 Years . . . 100 Stars.” Not me. Like the other two AFI events, this one fueled both delight and debate while succeeding in its main objectives: drawing wider attention to the AFI and to the American film heritage whose preservation is part of its mission. And I’d like to see more of these shows: directors, supporting actors, foreign movies and perhaps even gaffers.
There was irony, of course. Like Charlie and the Marx Brothers–or Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg–comedy is often rude, bumptious, irreverent and disrespectful, which is why it so rarely gets honored at Oscar time. But comedy is hard work, as anyone who acts on stage or screen will readily testify. Timing, resourcefulness, verbal and physical agility, a deep knowledge of human nature and a merciless eye for foibles–these are a few of the qualities a great comedian needs. And that is what’s required of a great movie comedy as well, from “Duck Soup” to “Some Like it Hot,” “Dr. Strangelove” to “Annie Hall.”
That’s why the AFI’s tribute is so welcome. And why this list, for all its lapses–its “Nine to Fives” and “Silver Streaks”–seems to me exemplary. I’d quarrel with 20 or so of the choices–and especially with No. 2, “Tootsie”–but that’s not a significant amount, given that 1,800 “film artists, critics, historians and executives” were polled.
With that many voters, you’re bound to get more familiar movies. That’s not necessarily bad, though, for the mass audience, many of the movies–especially older ones–are revelations. These movies aren’t taught enough in school or discussed enough in the media; people may have a hard time discovering them on their own. I’m often amazed by how many younger people haven’t seen Chaplin or Keaton, or for that matter Woody Allen. We forget how quickly popular culture turns over, how rapidly generations pass. For some audiences, Eddie Murphy is probably the Grand Old Man of comedy.
But if you go down the AFI 100 for rentals, you’ll see many classics, few clunkers. Most of the landmarks are there, from “It’s a Gift” to “Fargo.” The great clowns are mostly on board: majestic red-nosed curmudgeon Fields, salty and buxom Mae West, acrobatic ladies’ man Cary Grant, priceless bawler and tie-twiddler Laurel and Hardy, lascivious sharpie Bob Hope, manic goon-boy Jerry Lewis, chameleonic Peter Sellers and the mad spritzer Robin Williams. So are the top writers and directors: wise-cracking Billy Wilder, nimble Preston Sturges, suave Howard Hawks, heart-tugging Frank Capra and savvy Leo McCarey among the old-timers. Among the newcomers: the ultimate neurotic Allen, rambunctious Brooks, ringmaster Robert Altman and the Brothers Farrelly and Coen.
Very few great clowns were slighted. Joker-come-latelies like Jim Carrey and Whoopi Goldberg have plenty of time left to climb the ladder. The Three Stooges were absent, but probably only because shorts weren’t considered and few would argue that the head-bonking Stooges shine in their late-career features, all made without Curly.
Meanwhile, perched atop the list is one of my own all-time favorites: Wilder’s 1959 “Some Like it Hot,” the gangster pastiche in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are two Chicago musicians who unwittingly witness the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and have to flee to Miami, disguised as female musicians “Josephine” and “Daphne,” new members of an all-girl band whose vocalist is Marilyn Monroe.
“Some Like It Hot” was both a hit and a scandal, which is true of many top comedies; it was damned by prudes for its saucy innuendoes and hints of buried homosexuality. But today, “Hot” is maybe the mildest of four cross-dressing comedies on the AFI list, followed by Dustin Hoffman’s “Tootsie,” Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire’ and Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews’ “Victor/Victoria.”
What about Woody Allen, the critic’s darling who has become a politically incorrect punching bag? Though Allen placed five movies on the list, none of them came after 1979’s “Manhattan,” though the 1980s were the richest period of his career. No “Purple Rose of Cairo.” No “Zelig.” No “Broadway Danny Rose.” No “Hannah and Her Sisters.” No “Husbands and Wives” or “Bullets over Broadway” from the ’90s.
Would anyone seriously argue that those six movies aren’t miles better–and funnier–than Allen’s scruffy 1969 debut movie and heist spoof “Take the Money and Run”? There has always been a tendency among some to downplay Allen’s later movies and damn them as too pretentious. But even though, laugh for laugh, 1971’s “Bananas” is still his funniest film, his later comedies give us something more, just as Chaplin’s subtler and more moving features give us much more than his great rowdy shorts.
The AFI poll doesn’t really answer the persistent questions, “What is comedy?” and “Why doesn’t it get more respect?”–riddles pondered by scholars from Aristotle to Henri Bergson, Gerald Mast to Rodney Dangerfield. On one level, we can answer that comedy is what makes us laugh, that it’s a response based on surprise, tension relief, social leveling, recognition of common humanity, Bergson’s theory of the encrustation of the mechanical on the physical, sexual double entendres or a simple pie in the face. But we’ll never solve that mystery–at least, not in a short newspaper piece.
If I have one major complaint with the AFI list, it’s that the subtler, more humane comedies fared less well. The nomination ballot, after all, didn’t ask for the 100 greatest comedies, but the 100 funniest films. Those aren’t the same thing, and that’s why “Airplane!” managed to outpoll Keaton and Chaplin.
So, though the voters remembered “Adam’s Rib” and “The Philadelphia Story,” two prime sophisticated romantic comedies starring Katharine Hepburn, they ignored two Ernst Lubitsch masterpieces: the gossamer love-and-crime tale “Trouble in Paradise” and my own personal choice as Hollywood’s best romantic comedy, “The Shop Around the Corner.” “Shop,” poorly remade last year as the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan computer-wooing vehicle “You’ve Got Mail,” is the one with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as feuding Hungarian department store employees who snipe at each other in person, but fall in love via pen-pal letters.
The voters, and even the nomination ballot, also ignored Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant “North by Northwest,” though it is surely, along with Hitch’s 1938 British-made “The Lady Vanishes,” the best of all comedy thrillers. Some, of course, will quibble that “North” is not really a comedy at all. Well, excuuuse me. Just remember that Hitch’s original title for it was “The Man in George Washington’s Nose” and that the last shot of the train entering the tunnel remains one of the cinema’s great double entendres.
That’s what comedy often is: rude, irreverent and disrespectful. That’s why funny movies so rarely get honored at Oscar time. And that’s why the AFI’s tribute was as welcome as Laurel and Hardy on a sunny street. If you haven’t seen all the 100 movies, I’d advise you to start looking–and laughing–right away.
THE TOP 100, FROM `SOME LIKE IT HOT’ TO `GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM’
The 100 funniest American films, as chosen by a panel of 1,800 people in the industry for the American Film Institute:
1. “Some Like It Hot,” 1959
2. “Tootsie,” 1982
3. “Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” 1964
4. “Annie Hall,” 1977
5. “Duck Soup,” 1933
6. “Blazing Saddles,” 1974
7. “M*A*S*H,” 1970
8. “It Happened One Night,” 1934
9. “The Graduate,” 1967
10. “Airplane!” 1980
11. “The Producers,” 1968
12. “A Night at the Opera,” 1935
13. “Young Frankenstein,” 1974
14. “Bringing Up Baby,” 1938
15. “The Philadelphia Story,” 1940
16. “Singin’ in the Rain,” 1952
17. “The Odd Couple,” 1968
18. “The General,” 1927
19. “His Girl Friday,” 1940
20. “The Apartment,” 1960
21. “A Fish Called Wanda,” 1988
22. “Adam’s Rib,” 1949
23. “When Harry Met Sally …,” 1989
24. “Born Yesterday,” 1950
25. “The Gold Rush,” 1925
26. “Being There,” 1979
27. “There’s Something About Mary,” 1998
28. “Ghostbusters,” 1984
29. “This Is Spinal Tap,” 1984
30. “Arsenic and Old Lace,” 1944
31. “Raising Arizona,” 1987
32. “The Thin Man,” 1934
33. “Modern Times,” 1936
34. “Groundhog Day,” 1993
35. “Harvey,” 1950
36. “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” 1978
37. “The Great Dictator,” 1940
38. “City Lights,” 1931
39. “Sullivan’s Travels,” 1941
40. “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” 1963
41. “Moonstruck,” 1987
42. “Big,” 1988
43. “American Graffiti,” 1973
44. “My Man Godfrey,” 1936
45. “Harold and Maude,” 1972
46. “Manhattan,” 1979
47. “Shampoo,” 1975
48. “A Shot in the Dark,” 1964
49. “To Be or Not to Be,” 1942
50. “Cat Ballou,” 1965
51. “The Seven Year Itch,” 1955
52. “Ninotchka,” 1939
53. “Arthur,” 1981
54. “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” 1944
55. “The Lady Eve,” 1941
56. “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” 1948
57. “Diner,” 1982
58. “It’s a Gift,” 1934
59. “A Day at the Races,” 1937
60. “Topper,” 1937
61. “What’s Up, Doc?” 1972
62. “Sherlock Jr.,” 1924
63. “Beverly Hills Cop,” 1984
64. “Broadcast News,” 1987
65. “Horse Feathers,” 1932
66. “Take the Money and Run,” 1969
67. “Mrs. Doubtfire,” 1993
68. “The Awful Truth,” 1937
69. “Bananas,” 1971
70. “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” 1936
71. “Caddyshack,” 1980
72. “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” 1948
73. “Monkey Business,” 1931
74. “9 to 5,” 1980
75. “She Done Him Wrong,” 1933
76. “Victor/Victoria,” 1982
77. “The Palm Beach Story,” 1942
78. “Road to Morocco,” 1942
79. “The Freshman,” 1925
80. “Sleeper,” 1973
81. “The Navigator,” 1924
82. “Private Benjamin,” 1980
83. “Father of the Bride,” 1950
84. “Lost in America,” 1985
85. “Dinner at Eight,” 1933
86. “City Slickers,” 1991
87. “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” 1982
88. “Beetlejuice,” 1988
89. “The Jerk,” 1979
90. “Woman of the Year,” 1942
91. “The Heartbreak Kid,” 1972
92. “Ball of Fire,” 1941
93. “Fargo,” 1996
94. “Auntie Mame,” 1958
95. “Silver Streak,” 1976
96. “Sons of the Desert,” 1933
97. “Bull Durham,” 1988
98. “The Court Jester,” 1956
99. “The Nutty Professor,” 1963
100. “Good Morning, Vietnam,” 1987
