La Poison (1951): A Venomous Comedy

This post is my contribution the CMBA 2026 Spring Blogathon "Make 'em Laugh." Not long ago I was discussing The Banshees of Inisherin in a film group, and I said that although I knew it was not meant to be strict realism, it still felt realistic enough, and bleak enough, that I could not see it as a comedy, as many in the industry had called it. The answer I got back was, “Well, it’s not a tragedy, so it’s a comedy.” That remark left me scratching my head: maybe that's true in classic Greek theater, but is that true in cinema? I mean, isn't comedy, even black comedy, supposed to be approachable enough that it doesn't hit us emotionally in the same way a drama does? In any case, this experience burrowed into my brain such that I decided to explore a new-to-me black comedy, and one that may be less well known to my readers: the 1951 French film La Poison. Black comedy (also called dark comedy or black humor) is defined by Merriam-Webster as an approach to humor marked by morbid, ironic,…

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