Best Farce
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Billy Wilder's *Some Like It Hot* is a timeless masterpiece of screwball comedy. Its daring cross-dressing premise, witty dialogue, and stellar performances by Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, and Tony Curtis remain hilarious and surprisingly progressive for its time. The films clever plot twists and fa...
Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 RKO Radio Pictures comedy directed by Howard Hawks, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The film centers on a paleontologist’s increasingly chaotic situation involving an heiress and a leopard named Baby. It was adapted from a short story by Hagar Wilde originally p...
La Puce à l'oreille (A Flea in Her Ear) is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1907. The plot centers on a woman who sets up a rendezvous at a disreputable Parisian hotel to test her husband's fidelity, which leads to a complex sequence of mistaken identities. The play is a promi...
"Un chapeau de paille d'Italie" is an 1851 French vaudeville play written by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel. It is widely considered a masterpiece of 19th-century French comic theater and a defining work of the farce genre. The plot revolves around a man who must find a replacement for an Italian st...
La Dame de chez Maxim (The Girl from Maxim's) is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1899. The narrative follows Dr. Petypon, a respectable provincial medical student, who wakes up with a showgirl from the Maxim's restaurant after a night in Paris. The situation escalates into ch...
Un fil à la patte is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1894. The plot follows Bois d'Enghien, a man attempting to sever his relationship with his possessive mistress, Lucette, so he can safely marry a wealthy heiress. The narrative relies on the rapid accumulation of coincidenc...
L'Hôtel du libre échange is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallières in 1894. The plot is set in a Parisian hotel where multiple couples attempt to conduct secret, illicit rendezvous simultaneously. The structure relies on the physical movement of characters betw...
Occupe-toi d'Amélie is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1908. The plot begins when Marcel requests his friend Étienne to serve as a temporary husband for his mistress, Amélie, a cafe-concert singer, while Marcel is called away for military service. What is intended as a fake m...
The Butler and the Maid is a Carol Burnett Show sketch from the CBS variety series, pairing members of the ensemble in a domestic-service comedy.
Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself) is a three-act comedy by the French playwright Molière, first performed in 1666. The plot follows Sganarelle, a woodcutter who is beaten and coerced by locals into pretending to be a physician to cure a wealthy man's supposedly mute daughter. Th...
A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 political thriller comedy that explores deception and criminal ambition. The film follows a group of jewel thieves who engage in increasingly chaotic missteps after a botched heist. Its sharp dialogue and blend of farce and crime make it notable for its clever plotting...
Le Dindon (The Turkey, also translated as Sauce for the Goose) is a three-act farce by Georges Feydeau that premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris in 1896. The play follows multiple characters caught in escalating schemes of marital infidelity, with plots involving mistaken identities, di...
What’s Up, Doc? is a 1972 comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, featuring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. The production drew inspiration from earlier screwball comedies and classic animated shorts like those starring Bugs Bunny. It reflects a deliberate stylistic reference to films of the 19...
A Day at the Races is a 1937 comedy film featuring the Marx Brothers alongside Allan Jones and Maureen O’Sullivan. It achieved significant success like its predecessor, *A Night at the Opera*, marking the seventh installment in the series starring Margaret Dumont. The film was produced by Metro-Gold...
*Monsieur Chasse!* is a French vaudeville farce by Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1892 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. The plot centers on a husband who uses a hunting trip as a pretext for an extramarital affair while his wife pursues a liaison of her own, leading to overlapping rende...
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob is a classic Italian comedy film from 1973. It centers on two men, a businessman and a revolutionary, who cleverly disguise themselves as rabbis to escape assassination attempts. Louis de Funès delivers a memorable performance alongside Claude Giraud in this absurdi...
The Théâtre du Palais-Royal is a Parisian theater located within the Palais-Royal complex, established in the late 18th century. The venue became one of the principal stages for vaudeville comedies, farces, and light theatrical entertainment during the 19th century, hosting works by prominent playwr...
"Le Système Ribadier" is a French stage play classified as a vaudeville farce, co-written by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Hennequin in 1892. The plot centers on a husband, Ribadier, who regularly uses hypnosis to manage his wife and conceal his infidelities. The narrative escalates into complex, chao...
"Feu la mère de Madame" is a one-act farce by the French playwright Georges Feydeau, first staged in 1908. The plot revolves around a husband's increasingly frantic and farcical attempts to wake his heavily sedated wife to inform her of her mother's passing. Feydeau uses the restricted setting and r...
Chat en poche (English: 'Pig in a Poke') is a one-act farce by the French playwright Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1888. The title refers to the French idiom for purchasing something without inspecting it first. Like Feydeau's other works, the play relies on rapid dialogue, mistaken identity,...
Tailleur pour dames is a one-act French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau, premiering in 1886. The plot is driven by classic farcical mechanics, beginning when a doctor makes a secret detour to his wife's fashionable dressmaker, leading to a cascade of hidden identities and comic misinterp...
"La Cagnotte" is an 1864 vaudeville play written by Eugène Labiche and Alfred Delacour. The comedic farce follows a group of provincial gamblers whose pooled lottery winnings lead to escalating misadventures during a trip to Paris. It serves as a classic example of 19th-century French theatrical com...
The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe is a 1972 French comedy film directed by Yves Robert. It stars Pierre Richard as François Perrin, alongside Bernard Blier, Jean Rochefort, and Mireille Darc, following his misadventures in espionage. The film was a sequel to “The Return of the Tall Blond Man wi...
The Doctor in Spite of Himself, originally titled Le Médecin malgré lui, is a three-act farce by Molière first performed in 1666. Its central character, Sganarelle, is a woodcutter whose wife convinces two servants that he is a gifted physician who admits his profession only after being beaten. Forc...
Blades of Glory is a 2007 comedy film centered around two banned figure skaters, played by Will Ferrell and Jon Heder, who attempt to return to competition through a legal strategy. The film features supporting performances from actors including Amy Poehler and William Fichtner, following the develo...
"La Main passe" is a one-act French farce by Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1904, that exemplifies the playwright's mastery of the bedroom farce genre and his characteristic use of rapidly escalating complications. The plot centers on a husband whose attempt to confront his wife's lover sets of...
Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 comedy film following Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, two friends from Rhode Island. The pair embark on a road trip to Aspen, Colorado, intending to return a misplaced briefcase. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels star in this first installment of the franchise alongside supporti...
Get Him to the Greek is a 2010 comedy film developed by Nicholas Stoller, featuring Russell Brand as Aldous Snow and Jonah Hill in a new role. The movie reunites several cast members from *Forgetting Sarah Marshall* and was produced by Judd Apatow. It achieved commercial success with a $95 million g...
Death at a Funeral is a 2007 British black comedy directed by Frank Oz from a screenplay by Dean Craig. The film follows a family whose gathering for the patriarch's funeral spirals into chaos through mishaps including the accidental ingestion of a hallucinogenic drug, revelations about the deceased...
Die keusche Susanne is a German operetta composed by Jean Gilbert, with a libretto by Georg Okonkowski, that premiered in Magdeburg in 1910. The work is recognized as one of the most successful Berlin operettas of the early 20th century, notable for its lively rhythms and comedic farce. Its narrativ...
