Thesis: Introduction

What validates a film? Is it critical acclaim, box office success, or longevity? Is it all of these things, a combination of a few of them, or is it possible that it is in fact none of these factors which lend a film validation? To assume that any of these things validates a film is to believe that validation must come from the outside rather than from a single person for herself. What lessens my own personal experience of a film? If I love something and believe my reaction to be a reflection of my own inner thoughts and philosophies then why would this not be proof enough of personal validation? Honestly, what kind of validation could possibly carry more importance? If I cannot trust my own feelings about something, especially something as personal as a reaction to a piece of art, then what can I trust? At its best, film and our reaction to it can teach us about more than just the medium itself; it can teach us about our own life experience.
My most lasting and powerful responses to film have usually been in regard to films within the genre of romantic comedy. I see them in the theaters with dates, my girlfriends, my mother, and alone. I own them on DVD and I watch them over and over at home, each time feeling the same happy reactions as the first time that I saw them in addition to new revelations. These new reactions may come from something new discovered in the film, or something new discovered in myself. I smile when the characters smile, I cry when they cry, and when at the end I find the couple together I feel as though a piece of myself has also found closure and happiness.
For many, the response is not the same. Working in a genre that is disregarded by so many as a low of the art, I have found myself constantly defending my own personal experiences and responses to films that I love and am irresistibly drawn to over and over again. The genre has come to be known by nicknames like "date movies" and "chick flicks." In preparing this paper I have encountered many critics and theorists as well personal acquaintances with a dismissive attitude toward the genre. I have had conversations with men and women alike who, though polite, have emitted muffled groans and rolled their eyes at the mention of romantic comedies as the topic of my thesis. In many ways this very reaction is my basis for pursuing the topic. What has happened to the genre to make it elicit such a response from Americans? It has moved from being one of the most critically acclaimed and audience adored genres in the 1030s and 1940s, to being resigned to being thought of more recently as movie-going fluff? Has something in the hearts of the nation changed, or has something fundamental about the genre changed? To answer this question I have looked at countless romantic comedies from every generation of Hollywood film.


In the heyday of the genre, the 1930s and 1940s, people flocked to the theaters to see some of Hollywood's best fall down and fall in love. The remarriage comedies started out with a bang from Frank Capra's 1934 hit It Happened One Night, which enjoyed commercial and critical success and became the first picture to sweep the major Academy Awards. The genre consisted of pictures with the biggest stars and the most acclaimed directors. Actors no less than the likes of Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunn, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Clark Gable and directors such as Preston Sturges, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks, and George Cukor were among the staples of the genre as it packed theaters.
Since that time the genre has gone through several highs and lows with such great films as Annie Hall and some slightly less lauded films like Pillow Talk, before coming to rest in its current state of what I might call "Chick Flickdom." It is not every film within the genre that brings an overwhelmingly positive response from me. There are films among the cadre of romantic comedy that I can watch and dislike, those that I can watch just once and enjoy just that once, and there are those that I can watch and enjoy, but that leave me feeling that I have gained no new knowledge from the experience. I call this last group the Acute but not great@ section of the genre, and it is that section that I would like to focus some attention on here.
Maybe it is not simply the romance and the jokes and the kisses that I enjoy about these films (these are admittedly a part of the attraction). Inevitably, however, these elements are a part of every film within the genre, including those that I would never subject myself to viewing again (and especially not again and again). There are those films that, while enjoyable, teach me little about myself, about film, or about life. In recent years there have been many that fit this bill: Wimbledon (2004), Kate and Leopold (2001), Never Been Kissed (1999), Notting Hill (1999), Fifty First Dates (2004), The Wedding Date (2005), and Love Actually (2003). Upon viewing these films, I have found them to be entertaining but virtually devoid of philosophical elements. This fact may change if a great deal of attention and thought were devoted to these films, but as of yet I have found them to be nothing more than movie going fun.
It is interesting to note here that several of the films that I listed above, as well as a few others, have come from the same writer, Richard Curtis. He is the writer of romantic comedy hits Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), and Love Actually (2003). He has found himself a successful niche, and he is sticking solidly to it, even debuting as a director with Love Actually. He has taken his recognizable talent and gone with it as far as he can. He will assuredly crank out several more romantic comedy box office hits within the next few years, all with his familiar touch of a cutesy London where everyone has best friends and a series of fabulous or fabulously funny dates. This leads quickly to the issue of his films, and the genre in general, being formulaic. But what is wrong with a formula that works? The simplest answer to that seems to be "nothing." What I have begun to notice upon repeated viewing of the romantic comedies that have continued to pour into the theaters every year is that the philosophy and heart that made the early films so great seems to be lacking in the more recently released films. Early greats had couples that seemed real and important with a conversation that meant something. Newer films feature couples that are fashionable and have more snappy jokes than intimate conversations. Although the older films featured witty dialog as well, it was dialog that was about something, not just wit for the sake of laughs. Most of the newest releases have cute couples, funny scripts, silly situations, good jokes, and an almost guaranteed happy ending sure to please audiences. This fact is not surprising since these are the very elements that define the genre and place the films within it, but there is a formulaic sense to them that makes them almost too predictable and, often a little dull. To be certain I, along with large audiences of film goers, will still go to the theater to see the latest romantic comedy even though the television and theater previews have already revealed all there is to know about these works. Undoubtedly, I will enjoy my two hours in the theater but leave taking little else with me than the experience of relaxed entertainment. While these movies are entertaining, I have so far found that they have little to say about love, life, or the state of marriage beyond what their obvious plot and dialog reveal. They can almost all be fit into the same mold or movie formula and in a sense if you have seen one you have seen them all. There are certain genre criteria that can be found in most of the films that I qualify in this "cute but not great" category. For instance, nearly all of them contain a public profession of love at the climax of the film. In Notting Hill Hugh Grant poses as a reporter to tell Julia Robert=s that he loves her in front of the London press. In Never Been Kissed Drew Barrymore writes a newspaper article inviting Michael Vartan to meet her to share their first kiss in front of a stadium full of people (which he does). Love Actually finds Colin Firth professing his love (in Portuguese) to Lucia Moniz in front of a crowded restaurant full of people who have followed him there to witness the spectacle. Many of these films contain a sassy makeover for the main character. In Never Been Kissed Drew Barrymore goes from drab newspaper woman to a sexy high school student before catching her man. In Clueless Brittany Murphy gets a whole new look (in a montage set to pop music) that ends up bringing her the attentions of the same boy that liked her in the first place. There is also the near requisite fast forward to a vision of a happy future for the couple. In Wimbledon (or what my date for the film likes to refer to as "Wimbledumb") Paul Bettany summarizes the couple's future in a voice over as we watch Kirsten Dunst play happily with their two young children. Notting Hill utilizes the age old montage to give us a peek into the future of the couple where Hugh Grant attends a big movie debut with Julia Roberts, the couple canoodles happily at their wedding, and a contented Hugh and a pregnant Julia lie on a park bench together. In Serendipity John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale return to the site where they first met to celebrate their wedding anniversary. There are other standards that can be found in most of the recent cute romantic comedies: the wacky set of friends that advise our hero or heroine, the opposites attract element (goofy Adam Sandler and down to earth Drew Barrymore seem drawn together movie after movie) ...You get the picture.
In his article for the Los Angeles Times David Gritten calls Curtis' films "...benign confections that send millions of people out of the theaters with big smiles on their faces. They=re not meant to be taken too literally..." (E.3). But if they are not to be taken too literally (and in looking at some of the fantasy inspired storylines in Curtis' films, like the Prime Minister falling in love with the young woman who brings him tea or the man who learns Portuguese in two weeks to ask woman to marry him, it is clear that they are not meant to be taken too literally) then it is easy to follow this thought process to a point where the films are no longer taken seriously either. And if we are not to take them seriously then what are we to learn from them? The answer to this question may be as simple to the answer to the first: nothing. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are what they are intended to be and succeed in their mission of providing entertainment. There is here room for future research into films in this category that may hold a philosophy to them that has not been obvious to me on my first viewings of them. After all, my love of them has come from somewhere, and it will someday be interesting and worthwhile for me to devote attention to finding out where.
Some films of the romantic comedy genre strive to do more than just entertain; they attempt to be thoughtful while still presenting the stipulated couple that the audience must care about. In his article for Film Comment Howard Hampton lumps all of the recent "date movies" into the same grouping of films and says "Prosaic and uncinematic, the peicemeal design of these movies resembles a reception buffet line more than a compelling-obtrusive narrative: you select your preferred performers/scenes/fantasies and ignore the rest" (30). While I agree with Hampton on the point that there is some formula even in the films which I have found to be great but he includes in his buffet line, I find there is a difference between films within the genre in their use of the formula, and a different point to its use and therefore a different outcome. It is, in fact, less of a formula and more of a common ground that these films share. In the films that I read (here I am using the term "read" to roughly mean viewing and devoting attention to) in the chapters to follow there is no fast forward to a happy ending, no public announcement of devotion. They have left behind the contrived familiarities of the genre and kept only the ones that make them great, that make them a part of a bigger conversation that takes place in some of the other thoughtful films within the romantic comedy genre. These films use this common ground as a means of participating in this conversation in which the other films that contain the same philosophy also participate. This conversation is common thread among a series of films that muse on the same topic, not a guaranteed way to please audiences and fill theaters, or an excuse to simply go through the motions that a successful romantic comedy should go through. They are meant to engage an audience, not simply hold their attention for two hours.
These great films also borrow much of their philosophy from great remarriage comedies of the past, which were themselves formulaic. They too contained couples that audiences could root for, as well as witty dialog that led up to a happy ending. Like the new productions, these films used their common ground as dialog for their shared conversation, not as a means of imitating one another. In his book Pursuits of Happiness Stanley Cavell does in depth readings of the seven romantic comedy films The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam=s Rib, and The Awful Truth. He states that these films constitute a genre of remarriage comedy, and that "...the genre of remarriage is an inheritor of the preoccupations and discoveries of Shakespearean romantic comedy..." (1). He goes on to relate the films to Old and New Comedy through the readings of Northrop Frye and others. What I intend to do in this paper is to show that the five films I read are the inheritors of the preoccupations and discoveries of the remarriage comedy and contain much of the same devices used by these films as well as the same philosophical perspective on love, life, and marriage as the remarriage comedies which Cavell cites in Pursuits of Happiness. The films that I read here are not literally remarriage comedies themselves, and I do not yet wish to state that they constitute a genre of their own. To make either of those claims would require future research on the topic which I may someday hope to do. For now I would simply like to assert these films as the inheritors of the remarriage genre. Because the couples within the films that I read were never married nor divorced it is not a literal remarriage, but as Cavell details, the films of remarriage show that what is important is not the marriage itself but rather the question of what makes a marriage. He outlines how the films themselves show that the institution of marriage may have lost some of its authority on romance and love. What has become important is the relationship itself, not society's definition and labeling of it as something that can be easily recognized and categorized. Cavell finds that it is no longer the word marriage and the piece of paper that comes with it, but the meaning behind the word and the piece of paper with which these films are concerned.
... That this comedy expects the pair to find happiness alone, unsponsored, in one another, out of their capacities for improvising a world, beyond ceremony. Now I add that this is not to be understood exactly or merely true of modern society but as something true about the conversation of marriage that modern society has come to lay bare. The courage, the powers, required for happiness are not something a festival can reward, or perhaps so much as recognize, any longer. Or rather, whatever festival and ceremony can do has already been done (Cavell Pursuits 239).

He observed a movement away from the ceremony as being of paramount importance in the remarriage films (likely the ceremony was only present in some of the films which Cavell read because the Production Code made it necessary in order for the couples to have sex). The five films which I offer readings of have moved even further away from the institutional aspects to have their conversation about "marriage." Almost none of them contain a proposal and none of them at all feature a ceremony. In a society which has in recent years seen a divorce rate nearing fifty percent, this trend away from the institution in these films is neither surprising nor ill-advised. What these films are about is finding a love that is worth holding onto and on which a marriage can be based. A ceremony at the conclusion of each of these films would really assure us of nothing about the couples' future happiness.
I have chosen these five films because upon first viewing them I was struck by a sense that they had set themselves apart from the films of the genre that do not muse on topics more deep than what appears onscreen. Upon viewing these five films I was drawn to them and found myself taking more away from them than a fun two hours. They prompted me to give thought to the very topics they themselves mused upon. When I then began examining them under the microscope of Cavell I noted that these films share many of the same specific criteria and elements that Cavell noted in the seven films which he posited composed the remarriage genre. These films share many of the same elements which Cavell observed in the seven films in Pursuits of Happiness and through these associations they carry on the great tradition of their Hollywood predecessors. They offer insights into love, life, happiness, and marriage in the same vein as the remarriage classics and continue the tradition of philosophical thought found in the films from which they inherit their philosophy. To find value in this paper you must be able to place credence in the readings of Cavell. If you don't then you will have a hard time finding my observations to be anything but romantic musings. But if you can take heart in what Cavell wrote and in the truth of your own experience then you will find what I have to offer to be the thoughts of someone who has found value in experience and wants to share it. These films carry on the conversation that the remarriage films themselves inherited from Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, and others. It is hard to pinpoint when exactly this conversation started, but it has maintained its relevance and is a conversation that has been carried on through several media and I will show has found a new home in the five films of which I will offer readings.