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Find the top 100 classic comedy films, selected by Radio Times’ film experts. From 1927’s The General starring Buster Keaton to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, here is RT’s definitive list of the 100 best classic comedies, featuring reviews, cast and crew information, plot synopses’ and trivia.
3) The birds
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The Birds is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia where it won second place. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs. Unlike the author's other early plays, it includes no direct mention of the Peloponnesian War and there are few references to Athenian politics, and yet it was staged...
4) The wasps
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The play begins with a strange scene-a large net has been spread over a house, the entry is barricaded and two slaves are sleeping in the street outside. A third man is positioned at the top of an exterior wall with a view into the inner courtyard but he too is asleep. The two slaves wake and we learn from their banter that they are keeping guard over a 'monster'. The man asleep above them is their master and the monster is his father-he has an unusual...
5) Lysistrata
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Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. Of his extant works Aristophanes's "Lysistrata" is considered one of his finest and one of the truly great comedies from classical antiquity. Central to the work is the vow by the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands until they end the brutal war between...
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Lost Illusions, by Honore de Balzac, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies...
8) The inferno
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Arguably the greatest of poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. In the Inferno, Dante not only judges sin but strives to understand it so that the reader can as well. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically...
9) Père Goriot
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At the shabby boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, petty Madame Vauquer and her tenants wonder at the plight of the aging resident Goriot. Once a well-heeled merchant, Goriot was--at first--afforded special treatment from the Madame. But now something is clearly amiss in his financial affairs, and his increasingly tawdry appearance makes him a subject of ridicule in the household. Some think he lost in the markets, others see him as a...
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This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors.. This comic confrontation between the sexes is one of the most frequently-staged plays. Its sparkling wit and rich characterization are matched with an outstanding...
11) The Tempest
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This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors. THE TEMPEST is a dramatic romance, weaving fancy and realism into a plot that speaks to audiences today. This timeless stage is set on an enchanted island, where an...
12) The purgatorio
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"Award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang's new translation of Purgatorio is the extraordinary continuation of her journey with Dante, which began with her transformative version of Inferno. In Purgatorio, still guided by the Roman poet Virgil, Dante emerges from the horrors of Hell to begin the climb up Mount Purgatory, a seven-terrace mountain with each level devoted to those atoning for one of the seven deadly sins. At the summit, we find the Terrestrial...
17) The paradiso
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The final canticle of Dante's "The Divine Comedy" shares the ultimate goal of human striving: the merging of individual destiny with universal order. One of the towering creations of world literature, Dante's vision of universal harmony and eternal salvation is an immortal hymn to God, Nature, Eternity, and Love.
20) The Inferno
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The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary...