Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s

<p> This examination of dark comedies of the 1970s focuses on films which concealed black humor behind a misleading genre label. <I>All That Jazz</I> (1979) is a musical...about death--hardly Fred and Ginger territory. This masking goes beyond misnomer to a breaking of formula that director Robert Altman called "anti-genre." Altman's <I>MASH</I> (1970) ridiculed the military establishment in general--the Vietnam War in particular--under the guise of a standard milit