Comedies
82 Episodes
Laugh a little! Screwball, satire, gags, pratfalls, and pranks—we’ve got it all.
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2:18:56Episode 1
Cyrano de Bergerac
Episode 1
Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau • 1990 • France
Starring Gérard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Vincent PerezGérard Depardieu delivers a towering performance as the immortal hero of hopeless romantics everywhere—he of the legendary long schnoz who selflessly uses his verse to help a friend woo the wom...
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1:46:40Episode 2
Abigail’s Party
Episode 2
Directed by Mike Leigh • 1977 • United Kingdom
Starring Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Janine DuvitskiMike Leigh’s filmed version of his acclaimed stage play is a brilliantly biting comedy of manners that lays bare the bourgeois affectations and sexual frustrations of a young suburban couple. Abig...
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1:34:27Episode 3
Party Girl
Episode 3
Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer • 1995 • United States
Starring Parker Posey, Anthony DeSando, Guillermo DíazNineties indie queen Parker Posey is at her effortlessly cool best in this irresistible comedy, a time capsule of the era’s Manhattan club scene. She stars as Mary, a hard-partying ...
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1:34:30Episode 4
The Lady Eve
Episode 4
Directed by Preston Sturges • 1941 • United States
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles CoburnBarbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cr...
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1:28:16Episode 5
The Palm Beach Story
Episode 5
Directed by Preston Sturges • 1942 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary AstorThis wild tale of wacky wedlock from Preston Sturges takes off like a rocket and never lets up. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert play Tom and Gerry, a married New York couple on the skids, fin...
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1:45:20Episode 6
It Happened One Night
Episode 6
Directed by Frank Capra • 1934 • United States
Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter ConnollyOpposites attract with magnetic force in this romantic road-trip delight from Frank Capra, about a spoiled runaway socialite (Claudette Colbert) and a roguish man-of-the-people reporter (Clark...
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16:49Episode 7
Bad Night for the Blues
Episode 7
Directed by Chris Shepherd • 2010 • United Kingdom
It’s a holiday to remember—or not—when a young man joins his dotty elderly aunt for a Christmas party at her local Conservative Club, where the wine is flowing, the bingo is heated, and the cracks in the genteel facade start to show.
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1:25:40Episode 8
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
Episode 8
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1938 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett HortonThe great Ernst Lubitsch lends his famously sophisticated touch to this whimsical farce about a spoiled American millionaire who uses his wealth to lure an attractive French aristocra...
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Midnight
Episode 9
Directed by Mitchell Leisen • 1939 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John BarrymoreArriving at Paris’s Gare de l’Est train station with only her gold lamé gown on her back, penniless American ex-showgirl Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) must use her wiles in order to work h...
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Tampopo
Episode 10
Directed by Juzo Itami • 1985 • Japan
Starring Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Koji YakushoThe tale of an eccentric band of culinary ronin who guide the widow of a noodle-shop owner on her quest for the perfect recipe, this rapturous "ramen western" by Japanese director Juzo Itami is an ente...
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1:27:07Episode 11
The Daytrippers
Episode 11
Directed by Greg Mottola • 1996 • United States
Starring Parker Posey, Hope Davis, Liev SchreiberWith its droll humor and bittersweet emotional heft, the feature debut of writer-director Greg Mottola announced the arrival of an unassumingly sharp-witted new talent on the 1990s indie film scene....
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Amarcord
Episode 12
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1973 • France, Italy
This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini, satirizes the director's youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, an...
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1:27:38Episode 13
A Hard Day’s Night
Episode 13
Directed by Richard Lester • 1964 • United Kingdom
Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. A HARD DAY’S...
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1:34:38Episode 14
Good Morning
Episode 14
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1959 • Japan
Starring Masahiko Shimazu, Koji Shidara, Kuniko MiyakeA lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, GOOD MORNING tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after t...
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1:41:56Episode 15
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Episode 15
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar • 1990 • Spain
Starring Antonio Banderas, Victoria AbrilPedro Almodóvar’s colorful and controversial tribute to the pleasures and perils of Stockholm syndrome, TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! is a rambunctious dark comedy starring Antonio Banderas as an unbalanced but alluri...
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Mon oncle
Episode 16
Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne ServantieSlapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law,...
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1:47:45Episode 17
Withnail and I
Episode 17
Directed by Bruce Robinson • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard GriffithsLondon. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors—acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann)—drown their frustrations in booze, pills, and light...
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1:27:16Episode 18
Modern Times
Episode 18
Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1936 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry BergmanMODERN TIMES, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette...
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Hopscotch
Episode 19
Directed by Ronald Neame • 1980 • United States
Starring Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam WaterstonThe inimitable comic team of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson star in this nimble tale of international intrigue from master British filmmaker Ronald Neame. Based on Brian Garfield’s best-sell...
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2:33:42Episode 20
The Ruling Class
Episode 20
Directed by Peter Medak • 1972 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim, Arthur LowePeter O’Toole gives a tour-de-force performance as Jack, a man “cured” of believing he’s God—only to become Jack the Ripper incarnate. Based on Peter Barnes's irreverent play, this darkly comic indi...
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1:28:55Episode 21
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Episode 21
Directed by Jacques Tati • 1953 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Nathalie PascaudMonsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well...
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1:32:49Episode 22
Zazie dans le métro
Episode 22
Directed by Louis Malle • 1960 • France
Starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe NoiretA brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this ana...
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1:44:52Episode 23
Divorce Italian Style
Episode 23
Directed by Pietro Germi • 1961 • Italy
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniela RoccaBaron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (D...
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2:07:45Episode 24
A Taxing Woman
Episode 24
Directed by Juzo Itami • 1987 • Japan
Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko TsugawaCertainly the most exuberantly entertaining film ever made about the intricacies of the Japanese tax system, this delightful comedy stars Nobuko Miyamoto as a fiercely dedicated tax collector who g...