Do you like to laugh? ... Groucho Marx. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features theguardian.com Friday 11 October 2013 16.34 BST View more sharing options Shares 1,018 Comments 1,035 Notionally, one of the most loved of genres, comedy persistently finds that it is somehow ineligible for greatness. Comedies rarely get Oscars. Charlie Chaplin, the great comic, was one of cinema's first international superstars. Keaton, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy produced sublime gems of film-making, arguably cherished more now than at the time. Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot is one of the most loved films of all time, with a miraculously light touch and a glorious romantic chemistry between Curtis, Lemmon and Monroe. In Hollywood, the screwball tradition came to be supplanted in public taste by Woody Allen , whose DNA can be traced through the cerebral creations of Charlie Kaufman. Recently, Hollywood comedy has been characterised by the fratboy style of Wil...