Glamour is essential to romantic
comedy. Most modern romantic comedies will have a scene in which we see a character, usually the heroine, getting dressed, applying make up, etc.
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| Katherine Heigl in Life as we know it (2010) |
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| Katherine Heigl in Life as we know it (2010) |
Two of the greatest threats to the
romantic comedy, that came in the 1960s and lingered until around
1990, were cinema verite (direct cinema) and the New Hollywood. Both
have an interest in "realist" aesthetics.
Here is a quote from Robert Towne, one
of the leading screenwriters of the New Hollywood:
When I was a kid, I noticed four things about movies: the characters could always find parking spaces at every hour of the day and night, they never got change in restaurants, and husbands and wives never slept in the same bed. Women went to sleep with their makeup on and woke with it unmussed. I thought to myself, I'm never going to do that.
(Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, p. 33)
That last one amounts to a renunciation
of romantic comedy! How can two people be shown to fall in love with
each other within the generic outlines of a romantic comedy if they
see each other as they really are?!
We're happy to watch a man fall in love with this Katherine Heigl:
Not this one:
