Hollywood cranked out women's pictures (or 'weepies' as they came to be known, or are now known as "chick flicks") with excessive emotional fervor in the 1930s and after. In part because they contained few strong male characters and matinee idols suitable for swooning, they were films created for the female segment of the audience. Producers thought women would be more interested than men in relationships, love, and marriage, thereby escaping from their own problems, and empathizing (and weeping) with the on-screen sufferings of strong female protagonists. Female audiences would be attracted to plot lines that included doomed love affairs, infidelity, unrequited love, various family crises, or marital separation. The protagonists of women's films would often overcome stereotypical gender roles, and the films would examine the strong achievements of these characters.

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War films were revived in the mid-1920s during peace-time. MGM's and King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925) was a new kind of war film, and the first to realistically portray the horrors of battle and the struggle for survival by three soldier-comrades (a bartender, a riveter, and a millionaire's son) in the trenches. It also told of a love affair between an American doughboy (John Gilbert) and a French peasant girl (Renee Adoree). The film was a spectacular success, and made more money than any other MGM film production up to its time. MGM wished to repeat the film's success with Tell It To the Marines (1926), with Lon Chaney as tough Marine sergeant, O'Hara (Chaney's own favorite role, a 'straight' one without makeup). Next to Garbo's Flesh and the Devil (1926), it was MGM's second most profitable film of the year.

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Premiere Magazine compiled a list of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time in the July/August 2006 issue - the unranked list in chronological order represented a wide range of some of the best comedies ("the funniest stories ever told on film"), from "the Little Tramp to the Wedding Crashers". Descriptions are from the original source. See also this site's descriptive section on the Comedy Films genre, and illustrated listings of the Funniest Movie Moments and Scenes in the best comedy films in film history.

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Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is producer/director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, satirical, provocative black comedy/fantasy regarding doomsday and Cold War politics that features an accidental, inadvertent, pre-emptive nuclear attack. The undated, landmark film - the first commercially-successful political satire about nuclear war, has been inevitably compared to another similar suspense film released at the same time - the much-more-serious and melodramatic Fail-Safe (1964). However, this was a cynically objective, Monty Python-esque, humorous, biting response to the apocalyptic fears of the 1950s.

The witty screenplay, co-authored by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on Peter George's novel Red Alert (the U.S. title). [George's work, under his pseudonym Peter Bryant, was first published in England with the title Two Hours to Doom. Early drafts of the script were titled Edge of Doom and The Delicate Balance of Terror.] The novel's primary concern was the threat of an accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself did not appear in the novel, however - he was added by Kubrick and co-screenwriter Southern.

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Another literary figure from "Sapper's" (Herman Cyril McNeile) famed detective novels - Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond - became the featured suave, gentleman-spy hero in many films mostly made between the silents through to the late 40s. Drummond battled foreign agents, kidnappers, spies, and other villains during his adventurous exploits. [Bulldog Drummond was resurrected for a short period of time in the mid-1960s as a resourceful British agent, during the flurry of James Bond imitators.] The detective was portrayed by, among others:

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Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the earliest silent film comedians (as well as director and screenwriter). He started out with the Selig Polyscope Company in 1909 (his first film was Ben's Kid (1909)), and then went onto Universal Pictures in 1913 where he appeared in several of Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies films, noted for fast-paced chase sequences and 'pie-in-the-face' segments. Arbuckle was the first of the silent comedians to direct his own films, starting with Barnyard Flirtations (1914). His teaming with Mabel Normand at Keystone, in a series of "Fatty and Mabel" films, were lucrative for the studio.

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Ghosts as the subject of films date back to World War II era and post-war romantic comedies. A lengthy list of films with angels in them can be found in the genre section on fantasy films. Originally, supernatural apparitions were not intended to frighten audiences, but to entertain as they assisted earth-bound characters out of crazy predicaments, or interacted with them. For example:

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The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by emigre film-makers. Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Germ.) or Fritz Lang's M (1931, Germ.), Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937). Films from German directors, such as F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were noted for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of later film noir. In addition, the French sound films of the 30s, such as director Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko (1937), contributed to noir's development.

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Cast
Johnny Depp as Frank Tupelo
Angelina Jolie as Elise Clifton-Ward
Paul Bettany as Inspector John Acheson
Timothy Dalton as Chief Inspector Jones
Steven Berkoff as Reginald Shaw
Rufus Sewell as The Englishman
Christian De Sica as Colonnello Lombardi
Alessio Boni as Sergente Cerato
Daniele Pecci as Tenente Narduzzi
Giovanni Guidelli as Tenente Tommassini
Raoul Bova as Conte Filippo Gaggia
Igor Jijikine as Virginsky
Bruno Wolkowitch as Capitaine Courson
Marc Ruchmann as Brigadier Kaiser
Julien Baumgartner as Brigadier Ricuort
François Vincentelli as Brigadier Marion
Shashidhar as Shz
Nino Frassica as Maresciallo Cecchini
Neri Marcorè as the receiver of the hall

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Cast:

Winona Ryder, Ann Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Maya Angelou, Jean Simmons, Lois Smith, Kate Nelligan, Alfre Woodard, Kate Capshaw, Samantha Mathis, Dermot Mulroney, Derrick O'Connor, Joanna Going

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