Narrative technique · used in 48 films
Showing extreme, violent or surreal events while the characters react as if nothing unusual is happening. That mismatch is funny and unsettling at the same time.
Examples
Alfred Hitchcock · 1955
A corpse is an inconvenience for the neighbors, and nobody screams. No one is much upset about Harry's death. That calm tone makes the scenes funny and also a bit eerie.
Where to see it: The body on the hillside. The neighbors meet Harry's body on the hill and quietly work out what to do with it.
Billy Wilder · 1959
'Well, nobody's perfect' is the film's final line, and it's the purest example of Wilder's approach. Osgood stays completely calm when Jerry reveals the truth, and the film plays it totally straight. The joke works because neither man cracks. Both accept the absurd situation as a simple fact. The film earns that final punchline by keeping this straight face for its entire length.
Where to see it: The finale on Osgood's boat. Jerry takes off his wig and Osgood answers with a straight face. That gives you the most celebrated last line in Hollywood comedy.
Akira Kurosawa · 1961
The town is so used to killing that it has stopped reacting to it. The coffin maker is the only one doing good business. Kurosawa plays the horror flat, which makes it funny and grim at once.
Where to see it: The samurai's arrival. A dog trots past him down the main street with a severed human hand in its mouth, and nobody seems to care.
Akira Kurosawa · 1962
The chamberlain's wife and daughter have just been rescued from armed guards, and they act like they're out for a stroll. The wife politely tells Sanjuro he kills too much. Her calm next to all the panic is where most of the jokes come from.
Where to see it: The hideout next door. Mutsuta's wife gently scolds Sanjuro for his violence and says the best sword is the one kept in its sheath.
Stanley Kubrick · 1962
Quilty is meant to be facing death, but he keeps making jokes and strange offers. The shooting is serious and the dialogue is silly. That mismatch is funny and unsettling at once.
Where to see it: The opening confrontation. Quilty dodges with bizarre offers while Humbert holds the gun on him.
Woody Allen · 1969
Bank staff argue over whether Virgil's holdup note says 'gub' or 'gun'. Everyone treats it as a serious office question while a robbery is in progress. The police arrive before they settle it.
Where to see it: The bank note: Bank staff cannot agree whether the note says 'gub' or 'gun', and police arrive before they decide.
Woody Allen · 1971
The trial fills the court with absurd witnesses, and the room treats each one as a normal part of the case. The straight face makes the nonsense funnier.
Where to see it: The trial: Witnesses include a reigning Miss America and a woman who claims to be J. Edgar Hoover in disguise.
Robert Altman · 1973
Violence arrives in the middle of small talk. A gangster smashes a bottle in a woman's face to make a point, then carries on talking as if it were business. The calm is what makes it both funny and chilling.
Where to see it: The gangster's visit: Marty Augustine and his men rough up Marlowe at his apartment and demand $355,000 that Terry was meant to deliver.
Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones · 1975
The Pythons' method is to take medieval logic completely seriously and follow it wherever it leads. The witch trial's reasoning, the Black Knight's denial and the demands of the Knights Who Say Ni are all treated with earnest, by-the-book seriousness. The absurd humor comes out of that commitment. Nobody winks.
Where to see it: The witch trial. The villagers reason from 'if she weighs the same as a duck she is made of wood' to 'therefore she is a witch.' The film respects that medieval logic with no irony.
Sidney Lumet · 1976
The network negotiates broadcast rights with a terrorist organization. An anchor's assassination is produced as a programming event. None of it is played for shock. It all unfolds in boardrooms and memos, in the matter-of-fact tone of corporate decision-making. The deadpan delivery is the criticism.
Where to see it: The contract negotiation with the Ecumenical Liberation Army. Terrorists and network executives argue about profit participation, and the absurdity is treated as routine business.
Woody Allen · 1977
Subtitles translate what characters are 'really' saying during a conversation. Marshall McLuhan appears to settle an argument about his own work. A split screen shows 2 families at the same time. Allen uses these devices with no change in tone and treats the absurdity as ordinary. That makes the film's emotional honesty all the more surprising when it arrives.
Where to see it: The Marshall McLuhan appearance. Allen pulls the theorist out from behind a display to win an argument, and the film presents it as if this were entirely possible.
Woody Allen · 1983
The film treats a man who physically changes to match those around him as ordinary news. The narrator and the experts report it calmly. Zelig turns up behind Hitler at a rally and the film plays it as a fact to be explained.
Where to see it: The Munich rally. Dr. Fletcher finds Zelig standing behind Hitler among the Nazi leaders, and the film handles it as one more fact of the case.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 1985
Violence keeps going slightly wrong in ways that are funny and horrible at once. Characters respond to disaster as if it were just another bad day. The final exchange with Visser is dark enough to make you laugh.
Where to see it: Burying Marty: Ray starts to bury Marty, who is still alive, and Marty pulls the trigger 3 times on an empty gun.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 1987
Hi tells his wild story in a calm, flowery voice, and the people around him rarely look surprised. A robbery for diapers ends with police and a pack of dogs on his heels, yet the tone stays easygoing. The flat delivery makes each new disaster funnier.
Where to see it: The diaper robbery. Hi holds up a convenience store while buying diapers, then outruns the police and a pack of dogs through the neighborhood.
Peter Jackson · 1987
The heroes treat disasters as ordinary problems. After a fall from a cliff, Derek keeps his brains in place with a hat. The film plays the horror straight, and that is what makes it funny.
Where to see it: Derek's fall from the cliff ledge. He survives with a hole in his head and holds his brains in with a hat.
Peter Jackson · 1992
Lionel spends the film trying to keep up appearances while the dead pile up around him. He seems more worried about what the neighbours will think than about the zombies he is hiding. That mismatch is where the laughs come from.
Where to see it: Housewarming party: Lionel mistakenly injects the zombies with an animal stimulant instead of poison. The infected guests turn into zombies while Lionel tries to cover it up.
Danny Boyle · 1994
The flatmates interview applicants for the spare room by mocking them for fun, and later plan to cut off a dead man's hands, feet and teeth with the flat calm of a chore list. The mismatch between tone and action is funny and unsettling at once.
Where to see it: Flatmate interviews: Juliet, David and Alex interview applicants in a cruel way for their own amusement, then offer the room to a mysterious man named Hugo.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 1996
People discuss murder, kidnapping and getting rid of bodies in the same flat tone as restaurant orders and weather reports. Deadpan means saying outrageous things with a straight face, and the Coens' version has nothing cruel in it. It is how the film shows that evil is ordinary, dull and deeply stupid. Marge is competent and normal, and that threatens this kind of evil more than any dramatic showdown would.
Where to see it: Marge's examination of the highway murder scene. She is professional, thorough and 7 months pregnant.
Wes Anderson · 1996
Dignan lays out his crime career as a serious 75-year plan, and everyone treats it that way. The heists they actually pull off are small and clumsy. You laugh because nobody on screen admits how silly the plan is.
Where to see it: The 75-year plan: Dignan shows Anthony a series of heists that ends with a meeting with Mr. Henry.
Woody Allen · 1996
People start singing and nobody reacts as if anything is strange. The film also lets the dead dance at a funeral with the same straight face. That calm treatment is what makes the absurd moments funny.
Where to see it: The funeral. The corpses sing and dance in the chapel, and the film plays it as normal.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 1998
The Coens treat kidnapping, extortion, murder and nihilism in the same tone as bowling league disputes and White Russian recipes. The Dude reacts to every disaster as if it were a mild inconvenience. That deadpan gap between the event and the reaction is pretty much all of the film's comedy and philosophy.
Where to see it: The thugs who break into the Dude's home. One urinates on his rug, and they leave when they realize they have the wrong man. The disaster is pitched at the level of a small household annoyance. That deadpan tone tells you how the film's comedy will work.
Wes Anderson · 1998
Max plans an aquarium on the baseball field and talks about it like any other school project. The adults answer with the same straight face. The film never winks, so a teenager's huge schemes land as both silly and sincere.
Where to see it: The aquarium: Max's plan to build an aquarium on the baseball field gets him expelled from Rushmore.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2000
Things that should shock the characters are treated as normal. Delmar decides the washerwomen were sirens who turned Pete into a toad and carries the toad around. Everett keeps talking about his plans as if nothing strange has happened.
Where to see it: The scene after the 3 women feed them whiskey. The men wake up and Pete is gone, with a toad in his clothes, and Delmar insists on taking the toad along.
Bong Joon-ho · 2000
Yun-ju nearly drops a dog off a roof, then locks it in a cabinet, and the film treats it like ordinary apartment life. A janitor cooks lost dogs in the basement and no one acts shocked. The calm tone makes the cruelty funny and creepy at the same time.
Where to see it: The rooftop and the basement. Yun-ju finds a Shih Tzu, tries to throw it from the roof, and then hides it in the basement.
Wes Anderson · 2001
Every Tenenbaum family problem (suicide attempts, car crashes, incestuous longing) is delivered in Anderson's flat, museum-piece style. As a matter of fact, you can read the tragedy clearly because nobody ever acts it up.
Where to see it: Richie's suicide attempt. It is set to Elliott Smith's 'Needle in the Hay' and shot as neatly and carefully as every other scene.
Bong Joon-ho · 2003
Bong cuts between real horror and small-town slapstick. Detectives contaminate crime scenes, arrest the wrong people and fumble the paperwork, and all of it is played completely straight. The deadpan is an accurate picture of an institution running into something it has no way to handle.
Where to see it: The crime scene contamination sequences. The detectives' sloppy procedure plays as dark comedy. It sits right next to the real horror of the crimes they are failing to investigate.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2008
Violent deaths pile up, and the CIA men react as if they were paperwork. They do not understand what happened and decide to cover it up. The calm response to the chaos is where the comedy comes from.
Where to see it: The final CIA meeting. Smith and his superior sum up the shootings, cannot say what the point of it all was, approve Linda's surgery payment and close the file.
Wes Anderson · 2009
Anderson presents the war between the foxes and the farmers as seriously as a conflict between nations, with maps, sieges and negotiations. The animals act out human-sized drama with total, straight-faced sincerity. That is where most of the film's comedy comes from.
Where to see it: The war council scene. Mr. Fox, Badger and the animals work out military strategy around a table as if they were planning a campaign. All that formal language gets applied to a fight about stolen chickens.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2009
The parents give absurd orders and the grown children follow them without any sign they find them odd. Nobody laughs or winks at the camera. You laugh at first and then feel uneasy once you see what the rules cost them.
Where to see it: The memorial for the brother: after the son kills a cat, the father tells the children that a cat killed their invisible brother, and they hold a ceremony and learn to bark.
Todd Phillips · 2009
The actors play the chaos with complete seriousness. Because nobody winks, the absurd things feel real, and that makes them funnier.
Where to see it: The taser demonstration: The friends are pulled into a police demonstration and take it with panicked, straight faces.
Wes Anderson · 2012
Anderson treats 2 12-year-olds running away as a real emergency, with all the official procedure that comes with one. There are a police captain, a scout search party and Social Services. The adult world throws its whole oversized machinery at a child's love affair.
Where to see it: The town's emergency response to the children's disappearance. Law enforcement, scouts and parents coordinate, and the film plays it deadpan, with a straight face, like a military operation.
Woody Allen · 2012
Giancarlo sings beautifully only in the shower, so Jerry stages an opera concert with him washing on stage. The audience and the opera world take it seriously. Leopoldo wakes up famous for no reason, and the press follows his every move as if that were normal.
Where to see it: The shower opera. Giancarlo performs at the Teatro dell'Opera while soaping himself in an on-stage shower, and it is a hit.
Martin McDonagh · 2012
Billy and Hans steal dogs for reward money, and the characters treat it as a job. They treat kidnapping pets as an ordinary side job, even when one dog belongs to a gangster.
Where to see it: The dognapping: Billy and Hans steal Bonny, a Shih Tzu owned by the gangster Charlie Costello.
Richard Linklater · 2012
Bernie shoots Nugent four times in the back and then goes right back to being the helpful friend. He puts her body in a freezer and makes excuses for her absence for nine months. The film never plays it as a thriller, and that mismatch is funny and unsettling.
Where to see it: The freezer cover-up: Bernie buries Nugent's body in a large freezer chest and spends nine months making excuses, while spending $600,000 of her money on local businesses.
Wes Anderson · 2014
Murder, prison, torture and political violence all get handled through the hotel's codes of service, courtesy and professionalism. Whenever Gustave meets an atrocity, he falls back on the correct form. The absurd comedy comes from the gap between his flawless manners and the monstrous world closing in on them.
Where to see it: Gustave's prison orientation. He treats prison like a hotel check-in that only needs the right social procedure, and he organizes his fellow prisoners as if they were guests.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2015
The Hotel has rules for transformation, a ban on masturbation, hunting trips and the animal conversion itself. All of it is delivered in a flat, official tone with no emotion at all. Lanthimos' actors treat every absurd rule as obviously reasonable. The comedy comes entirely from the gap between what is said and how it is said.
Where to see it: The Hotel manager's orientation speech. She covers transformation, coupling and punishment in the rhythm of a corporate HR briefing. The absurd premise is played with a completely straight face.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2016
Baird is kidnapped by blacklisted Communist screenwriters and treats it as an ordinary conversation. Mannix handles the news with the same flat calm. The cast speaks about ransom and Marxism as if it were a studio meeting.
Where to see it: Baird's meeting with The Future. He wakes up with the writers, who quickly win him over to their cause.
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert · 2016
Hank treats a farting corpse as a perfectly good jet ski, and the film never winks at you. The straight face makes the gag funnier, and it also tells you how lonely Hank is to take the help.
Where to see it: Corpse jet ski: Hank rides the body across the water, pushed along by its gas, until they reach the mainland.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2017
The characters speak in flat, formal lines even when talking about death and sickness. Steven and Martin trade polite, level lines about a family's death. The mismatch is darkly funny and deeply unsettling.
Where to see it: The hospital reveal: Martin explains the family's fate to Steven in level, polite sentences.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2018
People bet on duck racing as seriously as they plan military strategy. Queen Anne keeps 17 rabbits as stand-ins for the children she lost. Sarah's fall from grace is talked about the way you would talk about weather or management. Lanthimos never breaks the period formality to admit how absurd it all is. Keeping a straight face is the whole technique.
Where to see it: The duck racing scene. The aristocrats bet on waterfowl with the same focus and commitment they give to real political decisions.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2018
A hanging is treated as an everyday event. The cowboy stands on the gallows with 3 other men and asks the weeping man next to him, First time? The joke works because he is as calm as a man in a line.
Where to see it: Near Algodones. A cowboy about to be hanged turns to the weeping man beside him and says, First time?
Rian Johnson · 2019
The Thrombeys are casually cruel, entitled without noticing it and theatrical in their grief. The film plays all of this completely straight, and nobody on screen acts like any of it is funny. That is deadpan. The film is mocking the hypocrisy of upper-class liberals, and it works because the characters fully believe in their own show of decency.
Where to see it: The family's political arguments, interrupted by the investigation. Their self-righteous opinions clash with how they behave. Because it's played deadpan, you see the hypocrisy yourself and the film never has to comment on it.
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert · 2022
Googly eyes are the symbol of cosmic acceptance, hotdog fingers are a tender love story and the everything bagel is the void. The Daniels play each absurd idea with total commitment and nobody winks. That straight face lets the film make real emotional points through ideas that would fall apart if they were played with irony.
Where to see it: The everything bagel. Jobu Tupaki explains the void through a snack, and the film delivers its nihilism as earnestly as a TED talk.
Wes Anderson · 2023
A UFO appears and an alien steals the meteorite that made the town's crater. The film treats it in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, and the military quarantine feels like a bureaucratic problem for a group of kids and parents.
Where to see it: The alien's visit: An alien steals the meteorite, and the military then quarantines the town.
Ethan Coen · 2024
The film plays a beheading, blackmail and plaster casts of powerful men in a light, breezy tone. The gangsters stay businesslike about it. That calm is the joke.
Where to see it: The opening. Santos nervously holds a briefcase in a Philadelphia bar, and a short time later he is killed and beheaded in an alley.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2024
People calmly accept shocking demands, including murder and self-harm, with flat voices and little visible emotion. The calm makes the cruelty funnier and harder to bear.
Where to see it: Daniel and Liz's reunion: Daniel decides his wife is an imposter, and he calmly orders her to cut out her liver.
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2025
Jesse Plemons plays Teddy's alien conspiracy with total sincerity, with no winking and no camp. Emma Stone's Michelle responds to being held captive with a manager's calm. Real delusion runs into corporate manners, and the film ends up funny and fairly unsettling at the same time.
Where to see it: The 'interrogation protocol' scenes. Teddy follows serious procedures for pseudoscientific nonsense.
Ethan Coen · 2025
Honey tells a police detective she likes girls, and he thinks she is joking. The film treats strange events, like a preacher running a drug operation and sleeping with his young congregants, with a dry shrug. That mismatch is where the dark humor lives.
Where to see it: Honey and Marty at the crime scene. Marty asks her out, and she says she likes girls, and he thinks she is joking.
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