French comedy film

French comedy films are comedy films produced in France. Comedy is the most popular French genre in cinema.

Comic films began to appear in significant numbers during the era of silent films, roughly 1895 to 1930. The visual humour of many of these silent films relied on slapstick and burlesque.

French comedy films are very often social comedies, which differs largely from American comedies.

Since Rabbi Jacob [...], the pattern of community comedy remained the same: a "foreign element" (potentially "disruptive") integrates (often against their will!) a community (ethnic, religious, geographical, etc.). Past the cultural shock and the inevitable mutual rejection phase, the protagonists inevitably realize that despite their differences (and before the end of the film), they are made for each other ...

Culture shock, in several French comedies, oftentimes contain several 'clichés', which include:

Some French comedy films are based on buddy film, in which two people with highly differing personalities are partnered up.

French comedy films are often based on linguistic differences:

The things that make the French laugh involve linguistic somersaults that only work in their own language. Much of French humour is 'jeux de mots', untranslatable wordplays.

In Europe, the theatrical genre-like comedy developed in the Greco-Roman antiquity, much like the tragedy theaters built in the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages, theater plays in the street, in the form of mystery plays, fabliaux, farces, soties and mimes were more or less inspired by antique survivals genres like Atellan.

In France during the 17th century under Louis XIV, the Italian influence and Molière began to recognize the comedy theater as an art in itself and not as a subgenre compared to the tragedy. From the 18th to the 19th century, comedy would continue to incorporate opera and comédie-ballet and become opéra comique. Comedy would also inspire the Operetta (Offenbach) in the middle of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, operettas were transformed into musical theatre. Bourvil and Fernandel started as operetta singers while Louis de Funès started as a music-hall pianist.

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