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The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

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#1

The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:28pm

I've been wondering for a while, maybe someone here with vast cineMUH knowldge can help me out here...

so:

What was the last real "comedy" to win the Academy Award for best picture?
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#2

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:31pm

Shakespeare in Love. (1999)

Or, if you don't count that as a "real comedy," I think you'd have to go all the way back to Annie Hall (1978?).
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."

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Updated On: 1/10/07 at 09:31 PM

#4

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:32pm

Or would Driving Miss Daisy (1990) count?
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."

The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
#5

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:36pm

oscars.org has the database of nominees and winners. No need to ask for someone "with vast cineMUH knowldge."
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#6

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:36pm

I'd certainly consider "Shakespeare in Love" a romantic comedy.
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#8

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:41pm

thanks for the link, Capn. I had no idea that existed!
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#9

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 10:20pm

Shakespeare in Love is correct.

And there have been VERY few comedies to win Best Picture.

*without cheating and looking at a list*

It Happened One Night
You Can't Take It With You
The Apartment (but I would argue that's a comedy/drama)
Tom Jones
The Sting (possibly?)
Annie Hall
Shakespeare In Love

In the "dramedy" department, I would put Driving Miss Daisy and Terms of Endearment.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
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#10

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/10/07 at 11:47pm

Don't forget Schindler's List.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy." -Charlie Manson
#14

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:16am

ANNIE HALL is one of the least funny movies I've ever seen. People say it is BRILLIANT. I've heard some people describe it as the best film ever made. I found it to be agonizingly boring. I know that Diane Keaton is the queen of overacting, but really, to give her an Oscar for THAT? Please.
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#15

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:26am

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is a comedy? I didn't laugh once during the damn movie. However, I did chuckle in certain parts of DRIVING MISS DAISY and TERMS OF ENDEAREMENT, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them comedies.

That said, I would say FORREST GUMP. Then again, humor is relative, but I remember the entire theater cracking up throughout -- including me.
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#16

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:34am

Well, I think ANNIE HALL is excellent and that Keaton is one of the best living actresses. Perhaps I just enjoy her.

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is, indeed, a comedy. I don't think it's best picture material, but it certainly was a comedy. So much a comedy that I don't think it can possibly be seen as a drama...but it's really not very good. It's charming.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is the opposite of a comedy! Crazy!

FORREST GUMP has its moments, but I don't think it can qualify for a comedy.

But then again, I would say CRASH. Just not in the standard sense of the word "comedy."
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy." -Charlie Manson
#17

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:50am

How about AMERICAN BEAUTY? Can satire be comedy? A dark comedy, perhaps?
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Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
Salve, Salve Regina
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
O clemens O pia
#18

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:52am

Forrest Gump would be more of a satire than a comedy, although there is a LOT of subtle comedy that a lot of people seem to disregard. It's not really a movie that you should take at face value, as a lot of people seem to have done.
#19

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:58am

AMERICAN BEAUTY is largely funny, but the ending transforms the entire film to have an overall depressing tone. I don't think it can quality as a drama.

Now that I think about it, CHICAGO isn't really a drama or a comedy - it's floating somewhere on the border in between.

I still think the safest and most correct answer is SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy." -Charlie Manson
#20

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 5:25am

I wouldn't call Forrest Gump a comedy, it's largely aiming for tears, I think...as is American Beauty, IMO.

Shakespeare in Love would count as a romantic comedy, I think...I'm sure the fact that it's a period piece makes it easy to overlook it as a comedy.

I think Annie Hall is often hysterically funny...the scene in line where he brings out the writer is one of my favorite things on earth, and as a girl who's from LA but primarily now lives in NYC I LOVE this line:

"I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light."
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#21

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 8:34am

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE won, in part, as a backlash to all of the "epic" films that had been winning in the immediately preceding years - TITANIC, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, etc...
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#23

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:03am

Actually, you have it backwards. It's not funny UNTIL...
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#24

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:04am

Shakespeare In Love is a brilliant film, with one of the best and "smartest" screenplays of the past 20 years. The movie gets better each time I watch it.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
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#25

re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?

Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:05am

I found it to be an overhyped piece of boredom.
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson

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