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20-504: Curtain Up is a 1952 British comedy film directed by Ralph Smart and starring Robert Morley , Margaret Rutherford and Kay Kendall . Written by Jack Davies and Michael Pertwee it was based on the 1949 play On Monday Next by Philip King . In an English provincial town, Drossmouth, a second-rate repertory company assembles at the Theatre Royal on Monday morning to rehearse

40-723: A camp sensibility lay behind the successful Carry On films , while in America subversive independent film-maker John Waters made camp films for college audiences with his drag queen friends that eventually found a mainstream audience. The success of the American television show Saturday Night Live drove decades of cinema with racier content allowed on television drawing on the program's stars and characters, with bigger successes including Wayne's World , Mean Girls , Ghostbusters and Animal House . Parody and joke-based films continue to find audiences. While comedic films are among

60-418: A happy ending , with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the oldest genres in film, and it is derived from classical comedy in theatre . Some of the earliest silent films were slapstick comedies , which often relied on visual depictions, such as sight gags and pratfalls, so they could be enjoyed without requiring sound. To provide drama and excitement to silent movies, live music

80-403: A call from a London producer, her philandering and semi-alcoholic husband, and Avis, a timid young girl who is quickly realising that acting is not for her. The cast is equally unenthusiastic of the play. Little progress is made. 'Jacko', the stage director, is at his wits end and threatens to resign, his regular habit when things go wrong. Just as matters seemingly cannot get worse, the author of

100-466: A few slapstick interludes, as well as slight romantic touches, the majority of the laughs are echoes of the Thespians' chortles at themselves." Variety wrote: "The joke of watching the cast struggle with the corny material soon wears thin. Even experienced artists like Robert Morley and Margaret Rutherford, as director and writer respectively, have difficulty in holding the piece together. They make

120-552: A period piece. A week later, to everyone's surprise, the curtain comes down on a triumphant first night. The film was shot at Isleworth Studios in London with the exterior of the nearby Richmond Theatre standing in for that of Drossmouth. Sets were designed by the art director Geoffrey Drake . The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Its script, though somewhat childishly obvious, is enlivened by moderately amusing jokes. Robert Morley filibusters his way convincingly enough through

140-717: A pitch for unsophisticated appeal, and in that respect succeed." The notice in The New York Times stated: "the provincial repertory company gets a gentle and mildly whacky going-over in Curtain Up , the British import that began a stand at the Sixtieth Street Trans-Lux on Saturday. It has such assets as Robert Morley and Margaret Rutherford, who easily manage to be quite superior to the threadbare situations in which they are involved, and it has

160-543: A separate genre, but rather, provides a better understanding of the film. Allmovie AllMovie was founded by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine , who also founded AllMusic and AllGame . The AllMovie database was licensed to tens of thousands of distributors and retailers for point-of-sale systems, websites and kiosks. The AllMovie database is comprehensive, including basic product information, cast and production credits, plot synopsis, professional reviews, biographies, relational links and more. AllMovie data

180-868: Is accessed on the web at the AllMovie website. It was also available via the AMG LASSO media recognition service, which can automatically recognize DVDs. In late 2007, TiVo Corporation acquired AMG for a reported $ 72 million. The AMG consumer facing web properties AllMusic , AllMovie and AllGame were sold by Rovi in August 2013 to All Media Network, LLC . The buyers also include the original founders of SideReel and Ackrell Capital investor Mike Ackrell. RhythmOne offices are located in San Francisco, California , and Ann Arbor, Michigan , United States. In March 2024, AllMovie announced that they have moved to

200-446: The director of the down-at-heel stock company who insists on wholesale changes. This amusing dig at showbiz preciousness is most agreeable." Allmovie wrote that "the delectable Kay Kendall provides a few sublime moments as the velvet-voiced leading lady." Comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor . These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have

220-515: The film industry due to their popularity. In The Screenwriters Taxonomy (2017), Eric R. Williams contends that film genres are fundamentally based upon a film's atmosphere, character, and story, and therefore, the labels "drama" and "comedy" are too broad to be considered a genre. Instead, his taxonomy argues that comedy is a type of film that contains at least a dozen different sub-types. A number of hybrid genres have emerged, such as action comedy and romantic comedy . The first comedy film

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240-459: The following week's play, a melodrama titled Tarnished Gold . Harry, their irascible producer, is highly critical of the play, which has been foisted on him by the directors of the company and is unenthusiastic about its prospects. The cast includes Jerry, a young and sometimes keen actor, Maud, a widowed actress who was once famous on the West End stage, Sandra, who is waiting for (and receives)

260-483: The glaring deficit of being static for lengthy periods. With Curtain Up , the actors have the opportunity of delivering some humorous lines here and there, but not too much else." In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "average", writing: "Buoyed up by its stars, this is still less funny than the hit stage farce on which it was based." Leslie Halliwell said: "Fairly amusing farce which has now acquired historical value for

280-429: The light it throws on the old weekly reps." The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "There's a nice irony in the fact that a film about a play in which the author refuses to sacrifice a single word of her text has been loosely adapted from the original stage show. Margaret Rutherford is in fine fettle as the persistent playwright, while Robert Morley gives a performance of polished petulance as

300-754: The most popular with audiences at the box office, there is an 'historical bias against a close and serious consideration of comedy' when it comes to critical reception and conferring of awards, such as at the Academy Awards . Film writer Cailian Savage observes "Comedies have won Oscars, although they’ve usually been comedy-dramas, involved very depressing scenes, or appealed to stone-hearted drama lovers in some other way, such as Shakespeare in Love ." According to Williams' taxonomy , all film descriptions should contain their type (comedy or drama) combined with one (or more) sub-genres. This combination does not create

320-543: The part of Blacker, but the laurels go to Margaret Rutherford as the author. Her personality endows this film with a striking comedy performance." Kine Weekly wrote: "The picture, steeped in the atmosphere of the theatre, contains as much by-play as plot and more than its fair share of dialogue. The talents of Joan Rice, Kay Kendall, Olive Sloane and other established and promising members of its supporting cast are barely extended, but Robert Morley and Margaret Rutherford make most of their talent weight tell. Although there are

340-410: The play, Catherine Beckwith, appears and insists on 'sitting at the feet' of the director. She and Harry are quickly at each other's throats. Harry tears up most of Act 1 and storms angrily off stage, falling into the pit and injuring himself. Despite the forebodings of the cast, Miss Beckwith insists on taking over the rehearsal according to her own ideas. However, Harry recovers and recasts the play as

360-512: The use of comedy film to make social statements by building their narratives around sensitive cultural, political or social issues. Such films include Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb , Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and The Graduate . In America, the sexual revolution drove an appetite for comedies that celebrated and parodied changing social morals, including Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Fanny Hill . In Britain,

380-414: Was L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895), directed and produced by film pioneer Louis Lumière . Less than a minute long, it shows a boy playing a prank on a gardener. The most notable comedy actors of the silent film era (1895–1927) were Charlie Chaplin , Harold Lloyd , and Buster Keaton , though they were able to make the transition into “ talkies ” after the 1920s. Film-makers in the 1960s skillfully employed

400-417: Was played in sync with the action on the screen, on pianos, organs, and other instruments. When sound films became more prevalent during the 1920s, comedy films grew in popularity, as laughter could result from both burlesque situations but also from humorous dialogue . Comedy, compared with other film genres , places more focus on individual star actors, with many former stand-up comics transitioning to

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