I’ve just discovered that a slap in the face is the funniest thing in the world. Well, maybe not to me. But apparently to a lot of people much younger than me, a slap is a sure guarantee for a big laugh, particularly if the act is man to man or man to woman.

Yesterday I’m at the class I’m taking on Billy Wilder, and I’m really enjoying The Apartment, which is already one of my favorite films of all time. The rest of the students, aged mostly 18-25, are also really enjoying it. After all, it is a timelessly hilarious film. But then, of course, comes the scene where Baxter (Jack Lemmon) finds Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) unconscious in his bed, barely alive after a suicide attempt. It’s a moment that certainly interrupts the comedy, and although some of the stuff that follows, between Baxter, his take-home barfly (Hope Holiday) and his next-door-neighbor doctor (Jack Kruschen), is occasionally funny, the situation overall is pretty serious. Especially the part where the doctor is attempting to revive Miss Kubelik with coffee, questions, smelling salts and some slaps across the face. The students I’m watching the film with, however, think those slaps are the most side-splitting thing they’ve ever seen.

I had sort of the same experience a few months ago. Twice, really, because I saw There Will Be Blood twice. Anyway, there’s another fairly serious scene in that film in which Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) gives Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) a number of slaps across the face. It’s kiiinda funny, if only because it’s a moment of loud and heightened emotion in an otherwise quiet and more naturally dramatic movie. The laughter that comes from the audience (both times I saw it, the theater was predominantly filled with a youngish audience) is more a reaction to that sudden break in tone and can be accepted as a release from uncomfortable tension. But it’s still kind of strange to hear so many people laugh as though it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. I think the scene may have been meant to supply some humor, but I doubt it is supposed to be that funny.

I have tried to think of some other cases in which such a slap receives roars of laughter. Obviously I exclude any blatantly intentional man-to-man slaps, especially with a glove, which mean to poke fun at old duel-movie slaps. I have also tried to think of any cases in which a woman-to-man slap is taken as humorous. Typically, a slap from a heartbroken or wronged woman is accepted in the serious way it’s meant to be. I can’t remember, though, if the students in the Billy Wilder class laughed when Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) slaps Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Sunset Blvd. I think they did, though that scene is, again, done with more heightened acting than today’s young audiences may be used to.

In any event, any budding screenwriters or filmmakers hoping to get a big laugh from an audience, whether they make comedies or dramas, should consider throwing in a random slap in the face during a relatively serious scene. It will be viewed as funnier than any kind of pratfall or walk-into-a-pole-type gag that would normally get thrown in.