46-461: Sexy Beast is a 2000 black comedy crime film directed by Jonathan Glazer (in his feature film directorial debut ) and written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto. It stars Ray Winstone , Ben Kingsley , and Ian McShane . It follows Gary "Gal" Dove (Winstone), a retired criminal visited by a sociopathic gangster (Kingsley) who demands that he take part in a bank robbery in London. Sexy Beast
92-465: A bank vault from below. Requiring criminal expertise, they persuade some local French gangsters to join them, in return for a cut of the haul. The gangsters' interest is purely financial, whilst Bert is at pains to point out that his interest is political. After several nights spent digging through a wall in a sewer , they break their way into the safe deposit boxes , and try to make their getaway without being caught. They delay pursuit by welding
138-430: A brief affair, Don grows furious and leaves. On the plane back to England, Don refuses to extinguish his cigarette prior to takeoff, is aggressive to staff and other passengers, and is ejected, but avoids punishment by claiming that a flight attendant sexually assaulted him. He returns to the villa screaming obscenities and attacks Gal with a glass. DeeDee emerges with Gal's hunting shotgun and shoots Don, incapacitating him;
184-405: A comic manner. Comedians like Lenny Bruce , who since the late 1950s have been labeled as using " sick comedy " by mainstream journalists, have also been labeled with "black comedy". Sigmund Freud , in his 1927 essay Humour ( Der Humor ), although not mentioning 'black humour' specifically, cites a literal instance of gallows humour before going on to write: "The ego refuses to be distressed by
230-533: A far ridere su un argomento talmente drammatico di cui si ride perché non c'è altra soluzione possibile, si ha quella che nei cabaret di Berlino degli Anni '20 veniva chiamata la "risata verde". È opportuno distinguere una satira ironica, che lavora per sottrazione, da una satira grottesca, che lavora per addizione. Questo secondo tipo di satira genera più spesso la risata verde. Ne erano maestri Kraus e Valentin. Sewers of Gold The Great Riviera Bank Robbery , also known as Dirty Money and Sewers of Gold ,
276-424: A genre in which dark humor is a core component. Cartoonist Charles Addams was famous for such humor, e.g. depicting a boy decorating his bedroom with stolen warning signs including "NO DIVING – POOL EMPTY", "STOP – BRIDGE OUT" and "SPRING CONDEMNED." Black comedy differs from both blue comedy —which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity , sex , and body fluids —and from straightforward obscenity . Whereas
322-616: A man who grasped things by reason and never by feeling, and who enclosed himself in skepticism; [...] Swift can rightfully be considered the inventor of "savage" or "gallows" humor. Des termes parents du Galgenhumor sont: : comédie noire, plaisanterie macabre, rire jaune. (J'en offre un autre: gibêtises). humour macabre, humeur de désespéré, (action de) rire jaune Galgenhumor propos guilleret etwas freie, gewagte Äußerung Walter Redfern, discussing puns about death, remarks: 'Related terms to gallows humour are: black comedy, sick humour, rire jaune. In all, pain and pleasure are mixed, perhaps
368-434: A neighbouring bath house. The pool water muffles the sound of the drilling equipment and also floods the vault and shorts its security system. As Teddy's crew empties the vault's safe deposit boxes , Gal secretly pockets a pair of ruby and diamond earrings. After the job, Teddy insists on driving Gal to the airport. He stops at Harry's home, where he shoots Harry and demands that Gal tell him where Don is. Gal responds that he
414-460: A script like it, and I thought, this has got to be made. It was very difficult to get insurance on the film actually. When the American studio bought the film, their legal department said: "You cannot make this." It has something like 300 uses of the word "cunt", and 400 "fucks", but somehow it passed the censorship and got out there." Technical elements of the heist have been compared with those in
460-1308: A spese di chi è più ricco e potente di te. Io sono specialista nella risata verde, quella dei cabaret di Berlino degli anni Venti e Trenta. Nasce dalla disperazione. Esempio: l'Italia è un paese dove la commissione di vigilanza parlamentare Rai si comporta come la commissione stragi e viceversa. Oppure: il mistero di Ustica è irrisolto? Sono contento: il sistema funziona. racconto di satira grottesca [...] L'obiettivo del grottesco è far percepire l'orrore di una vicenda. Non è la satira cui siamo abituati in Italia: la si ritrova nel cabaret degli anni '20 e '30, poi è stata cancellata dal carico di sofferenze della guerra. Aggiungo che io avevo spiegato in apertura di serata che ci sarebbero stati momenti di satira molto diversi. Satira ironica, che fa ridere, e satira grottesca, che può far male. Perché porta alla risata della disperazione, dell'impotenza. La risata verde. Era forte, perché coinvolgeva in un colpo solo tutti i cardini satirici: politica, religione, sesso e morte. Quello che ho fatto è stato accentuare l'interazione tra gli elementi. Non era di buon gusto? Rabelais e Swift, che hanno esplorato questi lati oscuri della nostra personalità, non si sono mai posti il problema del buon gusto. Quando la satira poi riesce
506-540: Is "not into this any more". While dropping Gal off, Teddy indicates that he knows that Gal was involved in something happening to Don, and implies that Gal would be severely punished if Teddy cared at all about Don. He suggests he may visit Gal in Spain and humiliates him by paying him only £10 for the job. Gal returns to his friends and family in Spain, where DeeDee wears the earrings and life has returned to normal. Gal still hears Don's voice in his head; he responds that Don
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#1732802299579552-460: Is a 1979 British heist film written and directed by Francis Megahy and starring Ian McShane , Warren Clarke , Stephen Greif and Christopher Malcolm . In the film, based on a bank robbery masterminded by Albert Spaggiari in 1976, members of a neo-fascist group team up with professional criminals to rob the safe deposit vault of a bank in a French resort town. It is the British version of
598-401: Is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo , particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction , for example, the term black comedy can also refer to
644-620: Is an acknowledged coping mechanism. It has been encouraged within these professions to make note of the context in which these jokes are told, as outsiders may not react the way that those with mutual knowledge do. A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing concludes that people who appreciate dark humor "may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it." Examples of black comedy in film include: Examples of black comedy in television include: Examples of gallows speeches include: Military life
690-502: Is dead now and can "shut up". Sexy Beast was shot in London and Spain in the summer of 1999. Ray Winstone travelled to Spain two weeks before filming commenced to get as deep a tan as he could in the time possible and to eat as much as he could to bulk up considerably. He later called this "the best rehearsal time I've ever had in my life". Winstone had originally been considered for the role of Don, along with Anthony Hopkins . The producer Jeremy Thomas remembered his experience making
736-429: Is full of gallows humor, as those in the services continuously live in the danger of being killed, especially in wartime. For example: Workers in the emergency services are also known for using black comedy: There are several titles such as It Only Hurts When I Laugh and Only When I Laugh , which allude to the punch line of a joke which exists in numerous versions since at least the 19th century. A typical setup
782-439: Is that someone badly hurt is asked "Does it hurt?" – "I am fine; it only hurts when I laugh." The term was part of the language before Freud wrote an essay on it—'gallows humor.' This is middle European humor, a response to hopeless situations. It's what a man says faced with a perfectly hopeless situation and he still manages to say something funny. Freud gives examples: A man being led out to be hanged at dawn says, 'Well,
828-568: The National Board of Review . Original music for the film was composed by Spanish composer/saxophonist Roque Baños and English electronic band UNKLE in collaboration with South . Dean Martin 's version of " Sway " accompanies the film's end credits. The soundtrack also includes " Peaches " by The Stranglers , " Cuba " by The Gibson Brothers , "G-Spot" by Wayne Marshall , "Daddy Rollin' Stone" by Derek Martin, and Henry Mancini 's "Lujon". Brian Sella of The Front Bottoms attributes
874-864: The Toronto Film Critics Association . He also was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award (losing to Ian McKellen for his performance in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring ), a Golden Globe and an Academy Award (losing both to Jim Broadbent for his performance in Iris ). The film also won Best Director and Best Screenplay from the British Independent Film Awards and Special Recognition ("For excellence in film making") from
920-406: The 1979 film Sewers of Gold , which also starred McShane in the central role. As of June 2024, the film has an approval rating of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes , based on 141 reviews with an average rating of 7.30/10. The site's critical consensus states, " Sexy Beast rises above other movies in the British gangster genre due to its performances—particularly an electrifying one by Ben Kingsley—and
966-719: The F-word into the atmosphere like anti-aircraft fire for 10 solid minutes" as the film's "one guilty pleasure". Sexy Beast grossed $ 10.2 million on a budget of $ 4.3 million, making it a relative box office success. Kingsley's performance received a majority of the accolades given to Sexy Beast , winning Best Supporting Actor awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association , Boston Society of Film Critics , Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association , Florida Film Critics Circle , San Diego Film Critics Society , Southeastern Film Critics Association and
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#17328022995791012-604: The French humour noir ) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift . Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism , often relying on topics such as death. Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor ( Anthologie de l'humour noir ), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as
1058-522: The French film Les Égouts du paradis , released the same year. Bert and Jean are members of a right-wing nationalist organisation closely connected to the Organisation armée secrète . Both men are ex-military, but now find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Nice , France. Needing to raise cash to buy weapons, Bert, an ex- paratrooper known as 'The Brain', devises a plan to dig their way into
1104-435: The arms found. He tries to cut a deal, exchanging a full disclosure on how the robbery was carried out in exchange for the arms charges being dropped. Before he can be brought to trial those accomplices who remain free snatch him from police custody and he escapes to South America. A French film based on the same events, Les Égouts du paradis , directed by Jose Giovanni , was released the same year. The robbery on which
1150-441: The band's name to a line spoken by Ben Kingsley in the film. Another line spoken by Kingsley inspired The Kooks ' song "Jackie Big Tits". A prequel television series based on the film was in development at Paramount Network , which was being produced by Paramount Television Studios and Anonymous Content . However, the series was scrapped by Paramount Network. On 15 February 2022, ViacomCBS Networks UK And Australia announced that
1196-445: The comedy is used to mock the victim. In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of (for instance) Sade . Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov . The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after
1242-505: The day is certainly starting well.' It's generally called Jewish humor in this country. Actually it's humor from the peasants' revolt, the forty years' war, and from the Napoleonic wars. It's small people being pushed this way and that way, enormous armies and plagues and so forth, and still hanging on in the face of hopelessness. Jewish jokes are middle European jokes and the black humorists are gallows humorists, as they try to be funny in
1288-890: The definitive recipe for all punning' (Puns, p. 127). En français on dit « rire jaune », en flamand « groen lachen » Les termes jaune, vert, bleu évoquent en français un certain nombre d'idées qui sont différentes de celles que suscitent les mots holandais correspondants geel, groen, blauw. Nous disons : rire jaune, le Hollandais dit : rire vert ( groen lachen ); ce que le Néerlandais appelle un vert (een groentje), c'est ce qu'en français on désigne du nom de bleu (un jeune soldat inexpéribenté)... On voit que des confrontations de ce genre permettent de concevoir une étude de la psychologie des peuples fondée sur les associations d'idées que révèlent les variations de sens (sémantique), les expressions figurées, les proverbes et les dictions. Q: Critiche feroci, interrogazioni parlamentari: momenti duri per la satira. A: Satira è far ridere
1334-399: The face of situations which they see as just horrible. At least, Swift's text is preserved, and so is a prefatory note by the French writer André Breton, which emphasizes Swift's importance as the originator of black humor, of laughter that arises from cynicism and scepticism. When it comes to black humor, everything designates him as the true initiator. In fact, it is impossible to coordinate
1380-405: The fascists are trying to sell the gold bars. They use connections with corrupt government officials to get it on a flight to Japan, disguised as camera equipment. It is then sold without questions being asked. They spend their share on buying arms. Eventually the police get a lead from the gangsters criminal network as to the whereabouts of ''The Brains''. He and most of the others are arrested and
1426-494: The feared sociopath Don Logan, arrives at Gal's villa, intent on enlisting Gal for a bank robbery in London planned by crime lord Teddy Bass. Teddy has learned about the bank vault from Harry, the bank's chairman, whom he met at an orgy . Gal declines, but Don continues to pressure Gal, growing increasingly aggressive and violent. After Gal suggests that Don's real reason for visiting is his infatuation with Jackie, with whom he had
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1472-448: The film: "Sexy Beast was the beginning of a new phase for me of working with first-time filmmakers. Jonathan Glazer was a television commercials director in the UK, and a wonderful talent. We were sent this script which he was attached to, and out came this wonderful film. It was very stimulating having a first time talent... The dialogue as you see in this film is exceptional. I had never read
1518-550: The fugitive traces of this kind of humor before him, not even in Heraclitus and the Cynics or in the works of Elizabethan dramatic poets. [...] historically justify his being presented as the first black humorist. Contrary to what Voltaire might have said, Swift was in no sense a "perfected Rabelais." He shared to the smallest possible degree Rabelais's taste for innocent, heavy-handed jokes and his constant drunken good humor. [...]
1564-400: The group beat him to death and bury him under the swimming pool. To avoid raising suspicion with Don's disappearance, Gal decides to do the job in London - preparing for the heist. When Teddy questions Gal about Don's whereabouts, Gal lies and claims that Don returned to London and called him from Heathrow Airport. The heist involves using diving gear to drill into the bank vault from a pool in
1610-439: The joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else. Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. According to Wylie Sypher , "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them." Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity. Its use
1656-450: The originator of black humor and gallows humor (particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), Meditation Upon a Broomstick (1710), and in a few aphorisms ). In his book, Breton also included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which
1702-695: The particular type of laughter that it arouses ( risata verde or groen lachen ), and said that grotesque satire , as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter. In the Weimar era Kabaretts , this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi, Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it. Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers , firefighters , ambulance crews, military personnel, journalists, lawyers, and funeral directors , where it
1748-399: The provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure." Some other sociologists elaborated this concept further. At the same time, Paul Lewis warns that this "relieving" aspect of gallows jokes depends on the context of
1794-476: The publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor , edited by Bruce Jay Friedman . The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy , Edward Albee , Joseph Heller , Thomas Pynchon , John Barth , Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline . Among
1840-504: The recent writers suggested as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl , Kurt Vonnegut , Warren Zevon , Christopher Durang , Philip Roth , and Veikko Huovinen . Evelyn Waugh has been called "the first contemporary writer to produce the sustained black comic novel." The motive for applying the label black humorist to the writers cited above is that they have written novels, poems, stories, plays, and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in
1886-604: The script's attention to character development." On Metacritic , it has a rating of 79/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". It received praise from writers at the San Francisco Chronicle , Entertainment Weekly , Slate , Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times . Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post was less enthusiastic, describing the plot as "preposterous" and highlighting "Ben Kingsley spraying saliva-lubricated variants of
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1932-415: The series was revived for Paramount+ , but would instead be produced by Train a Comin' Productions, Familystyle, Chapter One, Solas Mind, Anonymous Content and Paramount Television International Studios. The eight-episode series was released on 25 January 2024. Black comedy Black comedy , also known as black humor , bleak comedy , dark comedy , dark humor , gallows humor or morbid humor ,
1978-454: The term black comedy is a relatively broad term covering humour relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humour can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humour with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes . The term black humour (from
2024-430: The vault shut so that the crime is not discovered immediately as the bank assumes it is a faulty door, which will not open. The gang lie low in a villa and go to great lengths ensure the loot is shared fairly with the gang to avoid recrimination. The police struggle to get a lead but the gangsters soon start spending their shares and the notes are traced back to them leading to all the gangsters being arrested. Meanwhile,
2070-529: Was critically acclaimed, and Kingsley's performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor . In 2004, Total Film named Sexy Beast the 15th best British film . It was the final film to feature Cavan Kendall , who died of cancer shortly after filming ended. British ex-criminal Gary "Gal" Dove is happily retired on the Costa del Sol with his beloved wife DeeDee, his best friend Aitch, and Aitch's wife Jackie. An old criminal associate,
2116-666: Was widespread in middle Europe , from where it was imported to the United States. It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor (cynical last words before getting hanged ). The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune (lit. yellow laughing ), which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen (lit. green laughing ). Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humour focusing on
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