Un bon drame finds its comic energy in exaggeration and reversals. In fact, the film subverts several hierarchies, both through its subject matter and its mode of representation. The audience is at the centre of the narrative, staged within a theatre marked by a strict social order, where high society and workers occupy separate spaces. These social distances are, nevertheless reduced by the theatrical performance, which elicits the same emotions from all the spectators. The film also ridicules the noble genre of theatre, turning it into a comedic resource. This humor, based on the overturning of social order, is typical of the films produced by the Comica studio output and can even be seen on the theatre curtains, promoting the studio’s director, Roméo Bosetti, in dummy advertisements.

Carole Fodor