In general, screwball comedies epitomise Bergson’s definition of the comical: a certain “materiality that succeeds in fixing the movement of the soul”, that is opposed to grace and manifestly out of sync with the prevailing order of society and the normal functioning of human body. A typical example for this is the slipping on a banana peel, which occasions a disturbance of a flexible and continuous body movement and its harmony with the environment. Once repeated, this incidental moment of hilarity persists, but insofar as its oddity comes to be asserted as the new order, the laughter may more or less cease. It is thus an imperative with screwball comedy to negotiate and maintain a balance between surprise and repetition, although, admittedly, in terms of the genre’s distinction from other forms of comedy, what makes its “screwball” is also its capacity for and inclination towards overemphatic effects, which are less calculated to elicit laughter than to censure or survey the ab...