I know that explaining the joke kills it, but sometimes you have to break it down to understand how it works.

In this case, I’ll be breaking down the Endless Running scene from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. So for those who actually want to read this, and have the joke ruined for them, but haven’t seen the movie, here it is:

Monty Python was a British comedy group who created the sketch show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus back in 1969. Their comedy style consists of ridiculous satirical dialogues, and low budget visual humor. This scene from The Holy Grail very heavily plays on their low budget comic style.

Visual comedy heavily relies on framing, character displacement, and mise en scène. Visual gags may be based around physical impossibilities, or unexpected occurrences. In this case, it’s both. In the scene, the camera cuts between the same shots of Sir Lancelot running towards the castle, and shots of the guards looking out into the distance. In Lancelot’s shots, they’re using a depth perception trick called Motion Parallax, which is basically the illusion that objects that are further away appear to move slower than objects that are closer. The gag gets a joke out of Lancelot’s displacement using it in a ridiculous and surprising way, which, as mentioned earlier, bases it around a physical impossibility and an unexpected occurrence. Now, I don’t wanna be that guy who says “this is funny because…”, but, this is funny because the combination of the two gag themes completely catches the audience by surprise.

In further playing on the idea of unexpected occurrences, sound plays an important role in enhancing the joke. Generally, the sound (not just including the dialogue) can make or break the gag. Try to imagine this scene without the drum roll, the chewing noises (even though some of you hate those), or even the various music tracks in the background. It’s a bit shit, isn’t it? These various sounds are a key factor when attempting this kind of joke. The drum roll is a quiet and steady, but dramatic build up, the cuts back to diegetic sound temporarily pauses on the build up, leaving the audience not really expecting something big, and the sudden and loud fanfare that plays at the end is jarring and surprising which slows down the audiences reaction time, leaving them thinking what the hell happened.

The number one factor that must always be taken into account with any forms of comedy is timing. It’s all about ‘the perfectly timed sound’ or ‘the perfectly timed joke’. Anything to do with comedy has a perfect timing, because comedy is like music; it has to follow a rhythm, otherwise it’s a complete mess. Everything about this scenes timing is perfect. First of all, in my opinion, the best part about the timing is that the scene runs for that extra second too long, which isn’t enough to make the audience sick of the joke, but completely throws off the timing altogether. (The scene literally messes with the rules of comedy for the sake of comedy). It feels like it builds up to an anticlimax, but then suddenly hits you with the climax. Secondly, in relation to the previous point, the duration of each shot slowly decreases which generates that build up, but then the durations suddenly revert back to their original lengths, which makes it feel like an anticlimax. Lastly, the drum roll, the chewing noises from the left guard, and the silence from the right guard sets three different contrasting paces which all fit in together, kind of like how the three notes in a musical triad fit well together.

Small gags like this are cheap and great solutions to fix what is otherwise a completely dialogue driven comedy. In summary, visual comedy is such an important factor when it comes to film making. A good visual gag uses character and object displacement, as well as timing and sound to create physical impossibilities and unexpected occurrences. In this scene, the guys at Monty Python use Lancelot’s displacement, jarring sounds, and perfectly timed cuts to mess with the audiences perception, and surprise them.