The Best Comedy in Cinema History According to Global Critics

The game of selecting the best is an intriguing one that can be taken seriously or not; however, the final results of these selections—aside from showcasing the taste and perspective of each critic in their choices, which may be more important than the final outcome—can be noteworthy in terms of demonstrating overall taste, even if the final selection is not actually the 'best' and time may yield a different result. In the latest poll of global critics, 253 critics from 52 countries have chosen the best comedies in cinema history. This survey was conducted at the invitation of the BBC's cultural section, and the results along with various analyses were published on Tuesday, August 22. In this survey, 'Some Like It Hot,' directed by the acclaimed Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe, received the most votes, which is not surprising: a complete and captivating film that tells the story of two men who disguise themselves as women to escape from the mafia and join an all-female jazz band. The screenplay of this film can be used as a classroom lesson, and its carefully written dialogues are unforgettable, including the film's final line (in response to the confession that he is a man): 'Nobody's perfect!' 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,' directed by Stanley Kubrick (1964), secured the second place. 'Annie Hall' (Woody Allen), 'Groundhog Day' (Harold Ramis), 'Duck Soup' (Leo McCarey), 'Life of Brian' (Terry Jones), 'Airplane!' (Jim Abrahams, Jerry and David Zucker), 'Playtime' (Jacques Tati), 'This Is Spinal Tap' (Rob Reiner), and 'The General' (Buster Keaton) followed in subsequent ranks. Two films by Charlie Chaplin ('Modern Times' and 'The Great Dictator') ranked twelfth and sixteenth respectively. According to the organizers' analysis, 'Modern Times' has often been popular among critics from South Asia (ranked first among voters from these regions) but has not received significant acclaim among European and American critics. The organizers did not provide an initial list and only asked voters to select their top ten 'comedies' in history, leaving the definition of 'comedy' to the voters themselves. Ultimately, the presence of several films in the final list of one hundred selected as comedies may seem a bit strange; including 'Pulp Fiction' (Quentin Tarantino) at the forty-sixth rank and 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' (Pedro Almodóvar) at the fiftieth. Disagreement over the term 'comedy' has led to only three of the eighty-nine Oscar winners for Best Comedy Film being included in the final list of one hundred comedies by critics, and the organizers of this poll consider only seven films from the eighty-nine Oscar winners in this category to be 'comedies.' 135 male critics and 118 female critics from six continents participated in this survey, and the first and second choices of both women and men reached a common result, showing no significant difference in taste between male and female critics. The author of this text, as the only Iranian present in this poll, selected the following ten films: 'Feeding Frenzy' (Marco Ferreri), 'The Music Box' (James Parrott/Laurel and Hardy), 'Seven Chances' (Buster Keaton), 'A Trip to the Moon' (Georges Méliès), 'Ninotchka' (Ernst Lubitsch), 'Kiss Me, Stupid' (Billy Wilder), 'Ball of Fire' (Howard Hawks), 'It Happened One Night' (Frank Capra), 'Take the Money and Run' (Woody Allen), and 'What's Up, Doc?' (Peter Bogdanovich). The final list of one hundred films is mostly composed of classic films, with the most recent film to make it to this list being 'Toni Erdmann' by Maren Ade, released in 2016.