Only sourpusses and unbending esthetes aren't thankful for screwball
comedies. At their best these comedies have more actual invention in
situation and character and more turbulence and energy than
nine-tenths of the seriously intended, pretentious movies.... In
screwballs, relentless common sense is imposed on a lunatic situation
which has come out of and continues to operate in a realistic American
atmosphere.
-- Manny Farber. "The Logic of Lunacy" (September 21, 1942),
review of the movie The Talk of the Town. Reprinted in Farber
on Film, Library of America (2016).