Black comedy is a subgenre of
comedy and
satire that deals with a serious subject, that normally would not be humorous, in a humorous manner.
Some famous black comedy films include:
- Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, dealing with nuclear war.
- The Loved One[?], dealing with funerals
- Prizzi's Honor, in which a Mafia hitman and hitwoman fall in love
- MASH, in which the medical staff of a Korean War field hospital engage in silly mischief to alleviate the horror of the bloody carnage of the wounded they must treat
- Roger & Me, in which director Michael Moore follows the tragically ridiculous decline of Flint, Michigan and its effects after General Motors CEO Roger Smith closed the city's autoplants and threw 40,000 people out of work.
- Life Is Beautiful (Originally La Vita è bella), about an Italian Jew who uses humor and fantasy to hide the truth from his son in a concentration camp.
- Catch-22, another film about the madness of war, based on the novel by Joseph Heller.