A romantic comedy is a dramatic story about romance told with a light, humorous touch. Modern films often revolve around issues including:
- does true love exist
- there's someone out there just for us, and if we could only find them, we would experience true love
- romance can overcome all obstacles
Comedies since ancient Greece have often incorporated sexual or social elements. It was not until the creation of romantic love in the western European medieval period that "romance" came to mean "romantic love" situations, rather than the heroic adventures of medieval Romance. Howver, these adventures often revolved around a Knight fighting on behalf of a lady, and so the modern themes of love were quickly woven into them, as in Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart.
The creation of huge economic social strata in the Gilded Age, combined with the heightened awareness of sex after the Victorian Age and the celebration of Freud's theories, and the birth of the film industry in the early twentieth century, gave birth to the romantic comedy. The French film industry went in a completely different direction, with less inhibitions about sex and without the roots of screwball comedy, creating sex comedies.
Examples of romantic comedy films throught the various periods:
Screwball Comedy Period:
- It Happened One Night
- Bringing up Baby
- My Man Godfrey
Transitional Period:
- Singin' In The Rain
- Pillow Talk
- Lover Come back
Modern Romantic Comedies:
- Pretty Woman
- Never Been Kissed
- Notting Hill
- Love Actually
- Music and Lyrics
- When Harry Met Sally
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