Комедийные дуэты: Искусство контрастов и взаимодополнения.

Pair of comedians whose act is based on their uneven relationship
comedy duos

A double act (also known as a comedy duo) is a form of comedy originating in the British music hall tradition, and American vaudeville, in which two comedians perform together as a single act, often highlighting differences in their characters' personalities. Pairings are typically long term, in some cases for the artists' entire careers. Double acts perform on the stage, television and film. The format is particularly popular in the UK where successful acts have included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (Cook's deadpan delivery contrasted with Moore's buffoonery), Flanagan and Allen, Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies. The tradition is also present in the US with acts like Wheeler and Woolsey, Abbott and Costello, Gallagher and Shean, Burns and Allen, and Lyons and Yosco. The British American comedy double act Laurel and Hardy has been described as the most popular in the world.

Humor is often derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin, and profession but drastically different in terms of personality or behavior; each one serves as a foil to the other. One member of the duo—the "straight man", "feed", "dead wood", or stooge—is often portrayed as reasonable and serious, while the other one—the funny man, "banana man", or comic—is portrayed as funny, less educated or less intelligent, silly, or unorthodox. When the audience identifies primarily with one character, the other is often referred to as a comic foil. The term "feed" comes from the way a straight man sets up jokes and then "feeds" them to his partner. Despite the names often given to the roles, the straight man is not always humorless, nor is it always the comic who provides the act's humor. Sometimes the straight man gets laughs through sarcastic reactions to the comic's antics, such as Stewart Lee's deadpan, reasoned reactions to Richard Herring's ridiculous antics in their pairing. When the straight man serves no specific comic purpose, but acts as a device to make the comic look good, he is known as a stooge. Sometimes considered a derogatory term, "stooge" began to fall out of use by the 1930s with The Three Stooges. Most often the humor in a double act comes from the way the two personalities play off of each other, rather than from the individual players. In many successful acts the roles are interchangeable.

The model for the modern double act began in the British music halls and the American vaudeville scene of the late 19th century. Here, the straight man was needed to repeat the lines of the comic because audiences were noisy. A dynamic soon developed in which the straight man was a more integral part of the act, setting up jokes for the comic to deliver a punch line. Popular draws included acts like George Burns and Gracie Allen (who initially operated with Burns as the comic but quickly switched roles when Gracie's greater appeal was recognized), Abbott and Costello, Flanagan and Allen, Gallagher and Shean, Smith and Dale, and Lyons and Yosco. The dynamic evolved, with Abbott and Costello using a modern and recognizable formula in routines such as Who's on First? in the 1930s and Flanagan and Allen using "cross talking". Though vaudeville lasted into the 1930s, its popularity waned because of the rise of motion pictures. Some failed to survive the transition to movies and disappeared. By the 1920s, double acts were beginning to attract worldwide fame more readily through the silent era. The comedy was not derived from "cross talk" or clever verbal exchanges, but through slapstick routines and the actions of the characters. The first double act to gain worldwide fame through film was the Danish duo Ole & Axel, who made their first film together in 1921. The latter half of the same decade introduced to the world the inimitable team of Laurel and Hardy. The pair had never worked together on stage (they did as of 1940), though both had worked in vaudeville—Stan Laurel with Charlie Chaplin as part of Fred Karno's Army and Oliver Hardy as a singer. Laurel could loosely be described as the comic, though the pair were one of the first not to fit the mold in the way that many double acts do, with both taking a fairly equal share of the laughs. The pair first worked together as a double act in the 1927 film Duck Soup. The first Laurel and Hardy film was called Putting Pants on Philip though their familiar characters had not yet been established. The first film they both appeared in was Lucky Dog in 1921. Laurel and Hardy adapted well to silent films, both being skilled at slapstick, and their nonverbal interplay with each other and the audience became famous—Laurel's cry and Hardy's downtrodden glances to the camera whenever something went wrong—and were carried over to their later talkies. They were one of the few silent acts who made a successful transition to spoken word pictures in the 1930s, showing themselves to be equally adept at verbal wordplay.

In 1940 was the release of Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea, their final film for long term producer and collaborator Hal Roach. Later their popularity declined. In 1940s America the double act remained a cinema draw, developing into the "buddy movie" genre, with Abbott and Costello making the transition from stage to screen and the first of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's Road to series in 1940. Further acts followed. For example, the first pairing of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis occurred in 1946. About the same time The Bickersons became popular on radio. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner started their 2000 Year Old Man recordings and subsequent television appearances in 1961. The genre has continued to exist in cinema while making a successful transition to radio and later TV via The Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. In Britain, double acts were confined to theatres and radio until the late 1950s, when double acts such as Morecambe and Wise and Mike and Bernie Winters slowly began the transition to TV on variety shows such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium. These acts came into their own in the mid to late 1960s. When Morecambe and Wise teamed up with writer Eddie Braben, they began to redefine what was meant by a double act, with Wise, the straight man, being developed into a comic character in his own right. They provided the link between music hall and modern comedy for double acts. As the two leading double acts of the day, Morecambe and Wise and the Winters brothers enjoyed a playful rivalry—the Winters mocked the slight edge Morecambe and Wise had over them in popularity, while Morecambe, when asked what he and Wise would have been if not comedians, replied "Mike and Bernie Winters". A series of black and white films based on Don Camillo and Peppone characters created by the Italian writer and journalist Giovannino Guareschi were made between 1952 and 1965. These were French Italian coproductions, and starred Fernandel as the Italian priest Don Camillo and Gino Cervi as Giuseppe 'Peppone' Bottazzi, the Communist Mayor of their rural town. The titles are: The Little World of Don Camillo (1952), The Return of Don Camillo (1953), Don Camillo's Last Round (1955), Don Camillo: Monsignor (1961), and Don Camillo in Moscow (1965). The movies were a huge commercial success in their native countries. In 1952, Little World of Don Camillo became the highest grossing film in both Italy and France, while The Return of Don Camillo was the second most popular film of 1953 at the Italian and French box office. Franco and Ciccio were a comedy duo formed by Italian actors Franco Franchi (1928–1992) and Ciccio Ingrassia (1922–2003), particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Their collaboration began in 1954 in the theater field, and ended with Franchi's death in 1992. The two made their cinema debuts in 1960 with the film Appuntamento a Ischia. They remained active until 1984 when their last film together, Kaos, was shot, although there were some interruptions in 1973 and from 1975 to 1980. Together, they appeared in 112 films. They acted in films certainly made in a short time and with few means, such as those shot with director Marcello Ciorciolini, sometimes even making a dozen films in a year, often without a real script and where they often improvised on the set. Also are the 13 films directed by Lucio Fulci, who was the architect of the reversal of their typical roles by making Ciccio the serious one, the sidekick, and Franco the comic one. They also worked with important directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Taviani brothers. Considered at the time as protagonists of B movie, they were subsequently reevaluated by critics for their comedy and creative abilities, becoming the subject of study. The huge success with the public is evidenced by the box office earnings, which in the 1960s, represented 10% of the annual earnings in Italy. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the traditional formula was shunned by The Two Ronnies, who completely dispensed with the need for a straight man, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, two Oxbridge educated comedians who used the double act to deliver satire and edgy comedy.

Internationally the most popular double act of the 1970s was the Italian duo Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. The team had already made three straight westerns together during the 1960s but turned their act towards slapstick in their fourth (They Call Me Trinity, 1970), with massive success. Light entertainment in Britain in the 1970s was dominated by Morecambe and Wise, who enjoyed impressive ratings, especially on their Christmas specials. Although Mike and Bernie Winters's popularity declined, The Two Ronnies' success grew while Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sporadically produced acclaimed work, in particular, their controversial recordings as Derek and Clive from 1976 to 1978. The mid to late 1970s saw a resurgence in American double acts. Blazing Saddles (1974) featured a memorable performance by Mel Brooks and Harvey Korman (who later teamed up again in Brooks's 1981 follow up History of the World, Part I). Saturday Night Live, first broadcast in 1975, provided an outlet for comedians to appear in sketches as double acts and continues to do so. It was here that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi honed their characters The Blues Brothers, who were soon pulled to fame in the 1980 buddy movie of the same name. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor also embarked on a string of successful buddy films in the 1970s. Cheech & Chong also gained massive popularity during this time. Occasionally, the straight man/funny man dynamic appeared in unexpected contexts between characters not normally thought of as comics. This often appeared in the James T. Kirk (William Shatner)/Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) relationship in several episodes of the original Star Trek series.

Morecambe and Wise had dominated British light entertainment throughout the 1970s, but their presence waned in the early 1980s. When Morecambe died moments after finishing a solo show in 1984 (his last words were 'I'm glad that's over'), the best loved double act in British comedy came to an end, and several new acts emerged. The two distinct groups could not have been more different. In the wake of Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Young Ones and the breakthrough onto television of "alternative comedy" came French and Saunders; Fry and Laurie; Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson; Hale and Pace; and Smith and Jones. These edgier comics were brasher and crude—comedy's answer to punk rock. From 2006 to 2010, Apple used the double act formula successfully in its popular series of I'm a Mac/And I'm a PC ads with John Hodgman and Justin Long.

In Italy the tradition was more popular in the late part of the 20th century with Battaglia & Miseferi, Cochi e Renato, Ficarra e Picone, Fichi d'India, Gigi e Andrea, Katia & Valeria, Lillo & Greg, Pio e Amedeo, and Ric e Gian. Cochi e Renato were childhood friends, and they grew accustomed to perform together in front of an audience of friends and relatives. Their professional debut took place in 1965 in the small cabaret club Cab 64 in Milan, where they performed along with Lino Toffolo and Bruno Lauzi. their most successful song is "E la vita la vita", which reached the first place at the Italian charts in 1974. They then decided to performing together as Jerry e Fabio and worked in various theaters, nights and cabarets in Northern Italy as well as at the Crazy Horse in Paris. Gigi e Andrea started performing together in small theaters, cabarets and hostelries in Bologna in the second half of the 1970s. They debuted in 1978 on the Rai 1 variety show Io e la Befana. The year before they had appeared for the first time on TV in A modo mio, directed by Memo Remigi. In the 1980s, the couple starred and co starred in several comedy films which were usually badly received by critics but of commercial success. The same period, their presence on the small screen also became more intense, especially on Fininvest variety shows and television films. In 1998, the two remaining members began to use their surnames: Ficarra & Picone. In 2007 they debuted as directors alongside Gianbattista Avellino with the film Il 7 e l'8, for which they were nominated to David di Donatello for Best New Director and to Silver Ribbon in the same category. Also in 2007 they were featured as comic characters in the story Zio Paperone e il rapimento teatrale (trad. Uncle Scrooge and the Theatrical Kidnapping), published in the issue 2678 of Topolino.

In China, xiangsheng (also known as crosstalk) is a traditional comedic performance usually in the form of a dialogue between two performers.

In Japan the manzai tradition parallels that of the double although it is more formulaic. Here there is a distinguished straight man (tsukkomi) and funny man (boke) and the humor consists of quick slapstick jokes, comical stories and social misunderstandings.

In Germany Tünnes and Schäl (since 1803/1850s), two Cologne puppet theater characters, fit to the concept of fool and straight man. During WWII Tran and Helle appeared in a number of short films to deter Germans from actions detrimental to Germany's war effort or security. Between 1950 and 1980, the most popular comedy duo of East Germany, Herricht & Preil, ran a very successful double act, with Hans Joachim Preil as the straight man and Rolf Herricht as the comic.