Film 41 will focus on a select group of American comic films and filmmakers from the 20^th century. The theory and practice of genre, the diverse and complex nature of film comedy, its development, its moral and amoral perspectives, the treatment of women in comedy, will be some of the topics addressed. Tragedy is traditionally more "respectable" than comedy, but essentially both the tragic and comic responses to life come from the same source: our consciousness of the gap between existence as it is and existence as it ought to be.  This course should enrich our understanding of how this human predicament has been handled with laughter on screen.