In this blog post, we’ll summarize the major trends and characteristics of the genre, from the emergence of screwball comedy to the evolution of modern romantic comedy.

The Hollywood Landscape of the 1930s

By the early 1930s, the American film industry was built on relatively solid ground. Despite the global economic downturn of the late 1920s, the number of films produced actually increased with the advent of talkies, and the industry even posted record revenues in the early 1930s. However, the situation changed rapidly. As the economic crisis deepened, audience numbers declined, and studio revenues took a hit. Consequently, studios were forced to seek survival strategies and shifted to a system that distinguished between high-quality A-list films and low-budget B-list films, based on production costs and market demand.

The Rise of Screwball Comedy

When ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) introduced lip-synced singing and dialogue, demonstrating the potential of sound films, studios across Hollywood rushed to adopt the new sound technology. Comedy in the silent film era relied primarily on physical action—that is, slapstick—and produced stars like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, but the introduction of sound changed the nature of comedy. Screwball comedies—which combined witty and sometimes risqué dialogue with slapstick elements—became a popular genre, typically featuring romantic and eccentric couples or self-assured women who put men in awkward situations as central characters.

The Prototype of the Screwball Comedy: ‘It Happened One Night’ and Its Context

Frank Capra’s 1934 film ‘It Happened One Night’ generated significant critical and commercial acclaim, establishing the archetype of the classic romantic comedy. Along with films such as Howard Hawks’ ‘The 20th Century Express’, these works satirized the foibles of the upper class and, through fast-paced plots, frequently concluded that “true happiness cannot be bought with money.” Audiences during the Great Depression took great interest in the provocative themes of social and sexual conflict, and screwball comedies dominated the comedy scene of that era by reimagining fast-paced romances set in high society.
The typical plot and themes of screwball comedies inherently require a structure in which lovers—who are at odds due to sexual, social, or economic differences—eventually reconcile. The Great Depression of the 1930s starkly exposed class conflicts, and Capra, too, sought to address this issue through his films, aiming to show that genuine relationships could form even if class conflicts were not fully resolved.

The Dilemma of Screwball Comedy

Although numerous screwball comedies were produced afterward and enjoyed box-office success, none managed to generate the same impact as ‘It Happened One Night’. Many films repeated similar dramatic devices to establish central conflicts but failed to offer logical resolutions to those conflicts; as time went on, the repetitive narratives and characters gradually lost their appeal.
In later screwball comedies, the motivations behind the protagonists’ actions and attitudes tended to be dictated by external factors such as social structures or family dynamics. Consequently, even when problems were resolved and couples reunited, this was portrayed not as a personal resolution of their love, but rather as the restoration of social order and balance.

While classic screwball comedies depicted the protagonists’ eccentric behavior as inherent personal traits, later works effectively attributed the causes to external factors.
Nevertheless, the common thread running through the screwball genre is clear: sexual ideologies are magically resolved, class conflicts converge toward a utopian community, and, ultimately, problems are brought to a close through the institutional framework of marriage. The appeal of this genre lies not in the moderate ending itself, but in its ability to create a contradictory effect: an ending that appears to erase cultural contradictions while simultaneously celebrating them.

Preston Sturges’ Expansion and Mannerism

One figure who took the conventions of screwball comedy a step further, leading to mannerism, was the writer and director Preston Sturges. The eight films he made at Paramount over a five-year period were commercially successful but also highly self-reflective. Sturges borrowed genre conventions—such as sexual rivalry, the city-versus-country dichotomy, and satire of the ruling class—but cleverly twisted and manipulated them to delightfully subvert genre formulas.
Stylistically, Sturges also portrayed protagonists differently from Capra. While Capra’s characters were self-reliant and possessed a kind of wise innocence, Sturges’ characters often evoked sympathy through their typical “country bumpkin” traits. Although both directors used their popular appeal and commercial success as a foundation to create films that reflected their own self-awareness, they ultimately experienced a common phenomenon: a growing distance from their audiences.

Modern Romantic Comedies

Romantic comedy is a genre that combines romance and comedy; it has been produced consistently because it offers the prospect of stable profits with relatively low production costs. It essentially borrows the narrative structure of romance novels, centering on a love story between a man and a woman, and has its origins in screwball comedy.
However, the popularity of screwball comedies began to wane. By the 1940s, their popularity had gradually declined, and although romantic sex comedies featuring Marilyn Monroe became popular in the 1960s, they were not enough to halt the decline of the screwball genre. In the 1980s, the genre was kept alive by Woody Allen’s distinctive brand of romance, and in 1989, romantic comedies once again reached their heyday with ‘When Harry Met Sally’.
In the 1990s, a variety of films emerged, including ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, and ‘Notting Hill’. In particular, the British production company Working Title, starting with ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, brought a fresh perspective to the genre through films such as ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’, ‘About a Boy’, ‘Love Actually’, and ‘Pride and Prejudice’, shifting the focus of romantic comedy—which had previously been centered on Hollywood—to the UK.
In the Korean film industry, there is a tendency to view director Kim Eui-seok’s 1992 film ‘Marriage Story’ as the starting point of the romantic comedy genre. Since then, romantic comedies featuring lighthearted characters and a cheerful atmosphere have been primarily produced, with representative works including ‘Singles’, ‘The Young Bride’, and ‘A Woman I Know’.