Popular Film and Television Comedy by Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik - Book Report/Review Example

The authors specifically deal with the role of gag-based comedy and slapstick in Hollywood, the theatrical contexts and traditions from which it stems, and various issues involved in the attempts made to produce feature-length slapstick films during the course of the 1920s. Therefore, the authors undertake an essential discussion of the various crucial aspects of comedy in film tradition and, as they maintain, comedy has been part and parcel of this industrial and aesthetic regime.Significantly, every discussion undertaken in this article is fundamental to a general understanding of comedy and its role within the general aesthetic and industrial establishment of classical -and pre-classical -Hollywood cinema.

However, what struck me most in this article is the first section, ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’, in which the authors offer a convincing description of classical Hollywood cinema. A careful reading of the section helps one in comprehending the industrial structure, mode of production, and aesthetic regime marking the commercial cinema in America from 1917 to 1960. “During the classical period, the companies were known as studios… The primary staple product of the classical cinema in America was the narrative feature film…” (Neale and Krutnik, 97) In short, this section of the chapter makes the classical Hollywood cinema more familiar to the readers, by offering a discussion about the various fundamental aspects of classical Hollywood cinema.