The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The genre of cinema is a useful concept, essentially a collection of themes, images, plots, and routines that help viewers categorize their stories. For example, when someone says that he likes science fiction movies, what he really likes is that this film uses the routine of science fiction movies to explore the views that only this genre has.
Some genres have flourished, some have been short-lived, and some genres, such as Screwball Comedy, have only withdrawn from the stage of history after their boom.
The neuro-comedy film The Philadelphia Story
Neuro-comedy is a type of comedy film that combines romantic style and satire, with its signature fast dialogue, as well as scenes accompanied by laughter and fast-moving plots, which focus on the effects of various conflicts, such as conflicts between principles, conflicts between ideas, and conflicts between the sexes.
The 1934 release of One Night Affair marked the advent of neuro-comedy, a film that is still so popular today that it set the template for neuro-comedy and witnessed the genre's all-out popularity in the 1930s and 1940s.
One Night Out (1934) starring Clark Gable and Claude Calbeth
"One Night" was originally released in a few theaters, with little publicity and low box office, but during the second round of release in the same year, word of mouth began to ferment, especially in small towns. Despite his unfavorable career, he unexpectedly became a box office dark horse, and won 5 Oscar top awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenwriter, Best Actor, And Best Actress) in the same year.
Genre films are like some kind of time capsule that allows us to understand the social, economic, and political environment of the time, how this routine was developed, and to tell us what kind of social environment made it popular.
Taking "One Night" as an example, we can explore the characteristics and routines of neurorecords, and understand the development of this genre and the real society and film industry in the United States in the 1930s.
"One Night Wind"
<h1>Men & women</h1>
The two protagonists in One Night Wind are connected by accident.
Ellie is a confident rich man who knows what she wants, and at the beginning of the film, Ellie despite her father's obstruction, has a lifelong engagement with a pilot, and by chance, she is forced to cross the border with a man named Peter. Peter, on the other hand, was a working-class man who scoffed at Ellie's approach.
The whole film is based on the idea that men and women take on different social roles and cause trouble if one of them crosses the line.
Peter (left) and Ellie (right) in One Night's Affair
Gender conflict is often the central driving force of most neurorecord stories, and although the conflict in different films varies in size, what remains unchanged is that by the end of the film, either the contradictions between men and women have been alleviated, or the contradictions have become reasons for the two to love each other.
So why does gender conflict become the absolute core of neurorecordism?
In the early 20th century, American women worked in the welding workshop of the Lincoln Automobile Company in Detroit
In fact, neuro-comedy was born in a period of social upheaval, when women in American society poured into the labor market, which was the first time they competed with men in the workplace, and the social roles of the two sexes were changing.
The "gender exchange" between the characters in "One Night" is a reflection of the above phenomenon, such as the early morning scene in the film, Ellie dominates, Peter serves her breakfast, in a weak position, and then the tit-for-tat fast-paced dialogue between the two deepens each other's disgust at the beginning of the encounter, but also ultimately promotes the pairing of beautiful people.
This conflict is one of the most distinctive features of neurorevelopment, which also reflects the gender changes in reality through the collision of male and female protagonists.
In "One Night", Peter serves Ellie for breakfast
The dialogue between the two seems to be tit-for-tat, but it also implies sweetness
<h1>Urban & Rural</h1>
"One Night" is ultimately about a road trip, and the protagonists discover themselves in a journey full of unknowns. The key to the narrative is that both protagonists are from the city and face the test of the countryside in order to understand themselves.
In the film, the difference between urban and rural areas is highlighted by Ellie, who is accustomed to washing indoors, and she is significantly different from the peasant women who line up outside to bathe.
In "One Night's Eve", Ellie is ridiculed by the village women who line up to take a bath
In the United States in the early 20th century, tensions between urban and rural areas increased.
From the late 1870s to the 1920s, when the population of American cities surged from 10 million to 54 million, cities provided Americans with a path up class and gave people the opportunity to realize the so-called American Dream, at the cost of a rapid pace of life and the lack of traditional American values.
An American city in the early 20th century
In One Night And The Night and other neurorecords influenced by it, the protagonists often start their lives in the emerging American metropolises, and returning to the countryside represents a return to common sense and a tribute to what is truly precious.
The protagonists in the neuro-comedy film Baby-Rearing Odd Tam (1938) are all from the city's elite
<h1>High Class & Low Class</h1>
Building on the theme of urban-rural contrasts, One Night Also explores how two people from different social classes entangled and collaborated to solve problems.
In neuro-comedy films, misunderstandings about social norms and conventions drive the plot up and help the protagonists come together.
In "One Night's Eve", the spoiled Ellie mistakenly believes that the bus driver will listen to her instructions, and is left in place, so she has to travel with Peter, who wants to win back the job.
Peter in "One Night" wants Ellie to help him win back his job
The primary source of this theme is that in the mid-1930s, the United States was still not free from the effects of the Great Depression, and the neuro-comedy with handsome men and beautiful women gave people the opportunity to escape the troubles of reality.
In the movie, the world is full of adventures, life problems are just a piece of cake, there are lovers who eventually become dependents, and hard work is rewarded. Neuro-comedy is not only an escape from reality, but also reflects the attitude of the gap between the rich and the poor in society at that time, through the portrayal of the conflict between the rich and the poor, the working class working day and night is more sincere and more moral than the rich class.
In the mid-1930s, the United States under the Great Depression
Neurorecords often give the protagonists a cynical character, which influenced poor laborers throughout the 30s as the Great Depression took away their American dreams.
For example, in The Philadelphia Story, journalist Mike once said, "Young, wealthy, insatiable American women, they don't exist in other countries." ”
Reporter Mike (left) in The Philadelphia Story
At the beginning of One Night, Peter loses his job, he was a reporter for a New York newspaper, and peter despises the heroine for her wealth throughout the film. Ironically, by the end of the film, the two are married and Peter is in high society.
On the surface, even if wealth is like poison, people still flock to it.
The hero and heroine who end up together in "One Night Gone With"
Not every neuro-comedy has wealth as a central conflict, but this theme has appeared repeatedly, such as "Baby-Rearing" and "Philadelphia Story" have similar gender reversal bridges, telling the story of the gold worshipper having to choose between true love and wealthy suitors.
Even though this element slowly becomes a major feature of neurorecords, they all follow the same principle: although wealth is good, it is not enough to replace true love, and money can never guarantee happiness.
The heroine of The Story of Palm Beach (1942) faces a choice of wealth
<h1>Decent & vulgar</h1>
Film theorist Andrew Sarris defines neurorecordism as a sexless comedy.
In 1934, hays law in the United States stipulated that straightforward scenes in pre-code era films could only appear on the screen in the form of symbols or metaphors.
Although it is not explicitly stated, "One Night Flow" has also been affected, for example, in the film, Ellie successfully stopped a free ride with beauty, so that Peter's masculine charm was defeated.
Ellie who stopped the car in "One Night Wind"
The Hayes Code is a set of strict moral standards that forbid crime, violence, and especially sexual scenes in movies. It appeared as early as 1922, but did not begin to strictly enforce it until 1934, and changed all American films released until 1968.
The emergence of neuro-comedy is a powerful rebellion against the Hayes Code.
It's like a kind of common sense, like a veil covering, wrapped in subversive thoughts and sexual images to mix with regulations, and the straightforward sexual scenes in the film become flirting, and the meat strips become puns and metaphors.
Peter: "You're going to drive you crazy"
Neurorecords are based on a sexual frustration, a inability to touch or express one's true desires.
For the two protagonists of One Night, they are forced to share a room and pretend to be husband and wife. The film compares the hanging sheets to the biblical Wall of Jericho*, a metaphor for moral decency.
As the plot progresses, the love between the protagonists becomes stronger, and the frustration continues until the two get married, and the story finally brings the protagonists together under the premise of conforming to the Hayes Code.
The Wall of Jericho *: Quoted from the Bible, the legend is the collapse of the indestructible city of Jericho, which is a well-known story in the West.
"This is the Wall of Jericho"
<h1>Type of recession</h1>
Ironically, neuro-comedys struggle to break through the limits of the Hayes Code while relying on the boundaries set by the Code.
In the 1960s, more and more sexual scenes appeared on the screen, and the Hayes Code was almost impossible to implement. In 1986, the Hayes Code was replaced by the hitherto classification system, and the film industry entered a new era of adult content.
Replacement of the hierarchy of the Hayes Code
The sexual frustration content on which neurorecords depend for their survival has no market in the new era and is rapidly and completely declining. But the elements of neuro-comedy are still all over modern romantic comedies, and we can still see its shadow in dialogue, in the relationships of the characters and in the overall style.
Although by some standards, theatrical comedy may seem outdated, it can be said to be a necessary content to explore gender relations and attraction, and neuro-comedy symbolizes the film's move towards a more complex narrative and provides us with an unprecedented perspective on the fears, attitudes, and hopes of the people in the United States in the early 1930s.
Anne Hall (1977)
500 Days with Summer (2009)
You can try to contrast neuro-comedy with its contemporary "close relatives", what social issues are explored in modern romantic comedy, and what can it tell us in terms of love and life in the 21st century?
When the theatrical comedy and modern romantic comedy are put together, how much substantive difference is there between the two?