I know why one would want to write a worshipful little-sister book about the wisecracking characters in the classic screwball movies. I think the content and tone of this one are at odds, though. A random sample of the prose:
Garbo's sublime imposture of Soviet enthusiasm seems inspired by this Bergsonian perception linking rigidity of thought with inelasticity of demeanor.
That isn't even an uninteresting thought in context (Ninotchka). The 'seems' is unfortunate, since it's not an unusual thought either.
But none of the screwball heroines would have been so cautious or so slow. I can't write a paragraph in wisecracks either, and my conclusion is that prose is the wrong format for this whole book: it should have a whole lot of film clips attached with reasoning. Even better, it would have clips of parallel scenes in 1950s or modern movies to demonstrate what was different about the great age. Pity that the copyright system currently makes that unlikely.
The other wrong note in the prose is that the content is unquestioningly optimistic about the meaning, the intent, the effect of the wisecracking heroines. This includes a Lubitsch film, and who could reasonably get unambiguous optimism out of that? There is a little mention of the stock foolish-new-bride joke to take the heroine down a peg at the end. I like the literary connection DiBattista makes between romantic comedies and the health of society in companionate marriages, but she covers movies with as much difference as A Winter's Tale to Much Ado About Nothing, and even the latter has no wisecracks from Beatrice in the final speeches.
ISBN: 0300088159
So wrote clew in History (20th c.). | TrackBack