Romantic Comedy »

Claire Mortimer read Film and English Literature at the University of East Anglia. She has worked as a Media and Film Studies teacher for many years, and has been an assistant examiner for Media Studies AS examinations with AQA. She is currently the Head of AS Media Studies and a Lecturer in Film Studies at Colchester Sixth Form College.

Romantic comedy is an enduringly popular genre which has maintained its appeal by constantly evolving, from the screwball comedy to the recent emergence of the bromance.

Romantic Comedy examines the history of the genre, considering the social and cultural context for key developments in new genre cycles. It studies the key themes and issues at work within romantic comedy films, focusing in particular on the representation of gender and how the genre acts as a barometer for gender politics in the course of the twentieth century.

Claire Mortimer provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the genre, tracing its development, enduring appeal, stars and the nature of its comedy. Mortimer discusses both British and Hollywood classic and contemporary romantic comedies, ranging from canonical films to more recent examples which have taken the genre in new directions. In-depth case studies span a wide variety of films, including:

• *It Happened One Night

• *Bringing Up Baby

• *Annie Hall

• *Four Weddings and a Funeral

• *Bridget Jones’s Diary

• *Wimbledon

• *Knocked Up

• *Sex and the City

This book is the perfect introduction to the romantic comedy genre and will be particularly useful for all those investigating this area within film, media or women's studies.

Figures and tables

1 The romantic comedy: an introduction 1

2 The heroine of the romantic comedy 20

3 The hero of the romantic comedy 45

4 The comedy of romance 69

5 The British romantic comedy 93

6 The stars of the romantic comedy 112

7 Happily ever after? 132

Appendix Romantic comedy timeline 147

Filmography 150

Bibliography 154

Index 160