Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s: Twelve American Films

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This examination of dark comedies of the 1970s focuses on films which concealed black humor behind a misleading genre label. All That Jazz (1979) is a musical…about death - hardly Fred and Ginger territory. This masking goes beyond misnomer to a breaking of formula that director Robert Altman called
anti-genre.
Altman’s M.A.S.H. (1970) ridiculed the military establishment in general - the Vietnam War in particular - under the guise of a standard military service comedy. The picaresque Western Little Big Man (1970) turned the bluecoats vs. Indians formula upside-down - the audience roots for the Indians instead of the cavalry.

The book covers 12 essential films, including Harold and Maude (1971), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Being There (1979), with notes on A Clockwork Orange (1971). These films reveal a compounding complexity that reinforces the absurdity at the heart of dark comedy.