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Wes Gehring's It Happened One Night

223 Words1 Pages
‘It Happened One Night’ is often considered as the foundation of romantic comedies and the first film belonging to the Screwball Comedy genre, which was predominant in the 1930s and early 1940s. (Mizejewski 17). Wes Gehring summarizes the essential characteristics of this genre as follows: a story about a rich girl and a comic, mild-mannered anti-hero, who at first does not love the rich heroine (245). The man is unaware of his own unhappiness and worn out by the rich girl while the film itself is dominated by comedy and childlike arguments (Gehring 245). More in depth characterizations of the genre presuppose class-conflicts and the overcoming of social class boundaries (Rapf 195), and define Screwball Comedy as “’the comedy of equality,
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