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French comedy films occupy a specific cultural space and are influenced by national traditions and shared cultural references, but at the same time they have always been difficult to classify. This book investigates the different methods in which these comedies textually inscribed and exemplified a variety of cultural and historical landmarks.

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Introduction 1. The Early Comedies of the Sound Era 2. The Comedies of Post War France 3. Comedy in the Modern Era 4. French Comedy Today

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"Lanzoni effortlessly blends very astute aesthetic and formalistic analysis about the ´art´ of a film with a vast knowledge of relevant facts about actors, directors, producers, social and political events relevant to a film or a period, spectatorship, and technical issues (sound, dubbing, photography, set design, etc.). He has a very sophisticated grasp on just what constitutes comedy in general and film comedy of the French variety in particular. This is a book that could be used by a number of courses on film comedy and on French cinema - there is nothing like it in print." - Peter Bondanella, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Film Studies and Italian, Indiana University, USA

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Rémi Fournier Lanzoni is Associate Professor in Romance Languages at Wake Forest University, USA

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