Word: slapsticks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...parables written out of anger at some inexplicable kink in the collective psyche: blind trust in science and scientists (Cat's Cradle); faith in war as a rational activity (Slaughterhouse-Five). After a lengthy period of mellowed-out serenity (and two mediocre novels, Breakfast of Champions and Slapstick), Vonnegut is mad again. His target in Jailbird is money, specifically the odd systems that people have invented for distributing and withholding...
THROUGHOUT the silent film era, comedy was one of the most cinematic genres due to the tremendous visual dynamism of slapstick. With the advent of sound, film comedies became merely photographic recordings of funny dialogue and burlesque situations which could be effectively mounted on the stage. Even comedies of the 30's (including those made by the Marx Brothers which were unique in their own way) continued to exploit non-verbal, absurd gags. More contemporaneous comedians such as Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers and Mel Brooks also rely heavily on verbal puns and physical mise-en-scene, yet still with...
Director Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak) keeps the cast in tight control, and that is all he does. He misedits the slapstick sequences, bathes every scene in pasty white light and seems incapable of placing the camera in its proper position. Then again, maybe it is just as well that there is not a first-rate film maker behind The In-Laws. Had someone directed this movie for all it is worth, the audience might never get up from the floor...
...programmatic or even 60s-melodramatic; they once scheduled a concert in one Chicago hall and then performed in another. Today the Art Ensemble eschews formal theatrics, but they continue to affect a stage deportment that communicates--their movements can be stylized or abandoned, approaching sacred ceremony one moment and slapstick hokum the next. Jarman is the most consciously animated. During a drum solo he may turn his back and raise his arms as if in supplication or approach a microphone as if to sing but content himself with making faces at the levice. It is appropriate that the most memorable...
...this absurdity is the well balanced slapstick and caricatured roles. The establishment is represented by truly Establishment figures clad in uptight strait-laced uniforms of preppie pink satin and navy pin stripe, a glossy Chivas Regal wealth versus patched jeans-adolescent revolt. It's fun to watch Treat Williams traipsing across an elaborately laid banquet table, trying to maximize shattered crystal in his path. It's not to be taken seriously, and thereby doesn't offend our sophisticated Seventies cynicism...