Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s: Twelve American Films

This examination of dark comedies of the 1970s focuses on films which concealed black humor behind a misleading genre label. All That Jazz (1979) is a musical...about death—hardly Fred and Ginger territory. This masking goes beyond misnomer to a breaking of formula that director Robert Altman called "anti-genre." Altman's MASH (1970) ridiculed the military establishment in general—the Vietnam War in particular—under the guise of a standard military service comedy. The picaresque Western Lit...