Comedy is the oldest genre in the movies ' the first ever cinema show in 1895 packed a short about a boy tricking a gardener into soaking himself with a hose. The little sod. From there, the slapstick silent era sent cinema helter-skeltering into a crazy Golden Age of pure visual comedy: custard pies in faces, fat men falling over and ladders carried irresponsibly on shoulders. That, though, was just the start as two kings of comedy emerged. With his baggy trousers, waddling walk and bowler hat, Charlie Chaplin became a master of the laffer, whether eating his own boots, pretending to be Hitler or teaming up with fellow genius Buster Keaton in the hilarious Limelight. Keaton was hurled (literally) into comedy in his parents' violent vaudeville show ' and became not just a master comedian but one of the great stuntmen in history. In career that involved battling hurricane, leaping from speeding trains and playing billiards with a hand grenade, /The General/ is his masterpiece ' a epic Civil War romance to rival Gone With The Wind. But even Chaplin and Keaton never came close to the anarchic loonacy of the Marx Brothers. Led by fast-talking nutter Groucho, the foursome's films like Animal Crackers, Monkey Business and their masterpiece Duck Soup were surreal, relentless and very, very funny.
From educated smirks to belly-shaking guffaws, comedies kept coming in many flavours. Along with the conveyor-belt of Ealing classics, us Brits proved comedy could warm the heart as well as tickle the funnybone in the supremely lovely boys'-school comedy drama Goodbye Mr Chips. Hollywood, meanwhile, even spliced film noir with comedy in The Thin Man's witty detective series. Others were way, way spikier ' not least Mel Brooks' raucous spoof of the Western, Blazing Saddles, mercilessly skewering Hollywood and racism but still finding time for cinema's most famous fart-gag. Comedy wasn't always dumb fun ' see the literary satire of Bonfire Of The Vanities and saucy fantasy The Witches Of Eastwick ' but the goofing of Police Academy reached all the way back to Chaplin and Keaton for its crowd-pleasing giggles. Not exactly Oscar-worthy stuff, admittedly, but a whopping six sequels proved the three golden rules of the genre had never changed: make 'em laugh, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh!