FILM GENRE:

FILM GENRE are a set of conventions and formulas, developed through film history, which organize and categorize films according to repeated subjects, icons, and styles. Film genres are forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications or groups of films that are recurring and have similar, familiar or instantly recognizable patterns, syntax, filmic techniques or conventions.

Classical Genres are traditions that see a film in relation to a structural paradigm that transcends historical variations, that a genre film either successfully follows or not.

They include the following: settings (and props), stock characters (or characterizations, called stereotypes) and stars, content and subject matter, themes, period, plot, central narrative events, motifs, styles, structures, situations, recurring icons and cliches; e.g.

Weird green guys and flying saucers in Space Invasion movies.

Riding into the sunset, six-guns and ten gallon hats in Westerns.

Bad guys falling off rooftops, crooked cops and car chases in Detective movies.

Genre Categories: They can accommodate any film ever made, although film categories can never be precise. By isolating the elements in a film and categorizing them, it is possible to evaluate a film within its genre, allow for meaningful comparison and judgments on greatness. Films were not really subjected to genre analysis by film historians until the 1970s. All films have at least one major genre, although there are many films that are considered crossbreeds or HYBRIDS with three or four overlapping genre (or sub-genre) types that identify them.

The Auteur System can be contrasted to the genre system; auteur films are rated on the basis of the expression of one person, usually the director, because his/her indelible style, authoring vision or 'signature' dictates the personality, look, and feel of the film. Certain directors (and actors) are known for certain types of films; e.g. the Arthur Freed unit with musicals, Busby Berkeley for choreography, Woody Allen and comedy, Alfred Hitchcock for suspense, John Ford and John Wayne with westerns, or Errol Flynn for classic swashbuckler adventures.

The Main Film Genres: By the end of the silent era, many of the main genres were established: the melodrama, the western, horror films, comedies, and action-adventure (from swashbucklers to war movies). Musicals were inaugurated with the era of the Talkies, and the genre of science fiction wasn't generally popularized until the 1950s. One problem with genre films is that they can become stale, cliche-ridden, and over-imitated.

A traditional genre that has been reinterpreted, challenged, or subjected to scrutiny may be termed REVISIONIST.

The most common and identifiable film genre (Major ans Sub Categories) are:

• ACTION FILMS: Characterized by high energy, physical stunts and chases, with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises, natural disasters, non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes (or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys' - all designed for audience escapism. Includes James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage, martial arts films, and so-called 'blaxploitation' films. A major sub-genre is the disaster film.

• ADVENTURE FILMS: Usually exciting stories with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, 'jungle' and 'desert' epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches for the unknown.

• MELODRAMA: A stylized form of drama and the basis of soap opera, characterized by closely related characters; sensational appeals to emotion, compressed time and happy endings. FAMILY MELODRAMAS elaborate on the restrictions of the protagonist by investigating the forces within the family.

• PHYSICAL MELODRAMAS focus on the physical conditions that control the protagonist’s emotions; are these simply a product of the character’s physicality or related to the places and people around them.

• SOCIAL MELODRAMAS extend the crisis of the family to include larger historical, community, and economic issues. In these films, the losses, sufferings, and frustrations of the protagonist are visible parts of a social or national politics.

• DRAMA FILMS: Serious and plot-driven, portraying realistic characters, settings, situations and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Not usually focused on special effects, comedy, or action, drama films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets. See also the melodramas, epics (historical dramas), or romantic genres.

• BIOGRAPHICAL FILMS: (or 'bio-pics') are a major sub-genre, as are 'ADULT' films (with mature subject content).

• EPICS/HISTORICAL FILMS: Historical dramas, war films, medieval romps or 'period pictures' that can cover a great expanse of time, set against a vast, panoramic backdrop. Epics share elements of the adventure genre; an historical or imagined event, a legendary heroic figure, an extravagant setting and costumes, accompanied by grandeur and spectacle; otherwise, a lavish version of a biopic. 'Sword and sandal' films (and some Biblical epics) qualify as a sub-genre.

• ROMANCE FILMS: Love stories that center on passion, emotion, and the romantic involvement of the main characters, and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus. Lovers in screen romances (often romantic dramas) face obstacles and hazards of hardship; financial, physical, racial or social class status, occupation, psychological restraints, or family that threaten to break their union and attainment of love. As in all romantic relationships, tensions of day-to-day life, temptations (of infidelity), and differences in compatibility enter into plots of romantic films.

• COMEDY FILMS: Light-hearted plots deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships and characters. The main traits consist of central characters defined by distinctive physical features, and narratives that emphasize individual episodes more than plot continuity or progression and that usually conclude happily; and theatrical acting styles in which characters physically and playfully interact with the mise-en-scène that surrounds them. Taking various forms in cinema, including spoofs and parodies.

• BLACK COMEDY: Dark satirical comedy.

• ROMANTIC COMEDY: Concentrates on the emotional attraction of a couple in a light-hearted manner, drawing attention to a peculiar social predicament.

• SCREWBALL COMEDY: Emphasizes fast-talking verbal gymnastics, displacing the sexual energy into barbed verbal exchanges between men and women.

• SLAPSTICK: Emphasizes humorous stunts, physical actions, and gags.

• THRILLER & SUSPENSE: These promote intense excitement, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense genres are virtually interchangeable, with similar characteristics. A genuine thriller relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal - to provide thrills and keep the audience on the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax.

The tension usually arises when the main character(s) is placed in a menacing situation or mystery, or an escape or dangerous mission from which escape seems impossible. Life itself is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspecting or unknowingly involved in a potentially deadly situation.

• CRIME & GANGSTER FILMS: A diverse genre influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Sherlock Holmes with some overarching characteristics; characters are either criminals, individuals dedicated to crime detection, or individuals who live on the edge of a mysterious or violent society; plots of crime, increasing mystery and ambiguous resolution, in dark urban settings. Gangster films are typically (but not necessarily) set in the 1930s when underworld criminal societies thrived.

Developed around the sinister actions of underworld figures, particularly crime bosses, mobsters or ruthless hoodlums operating outside the law. The criminal activity in these films describes a social world continually threatened by the most brutal instincts of its outcasts.

• DETECTIVE & MYSTERY FILMS: A sub-type of crime/gangster films (or FILM NOIR), focusing on the unsolved crime (usually the murder or disappearance of characters, or a theft), and on the central character - a hard-boiled detective-hero who meets various challenges in the methodical pursuit of the solution to the crime.

Suspense is added as the protagonist struggles within the puzzle-like narrative to gather evidence and testimony, to investigate all motives, and to discover the one essential clue or fatal flaw/alibi that betrays the identity of the culprit. The detective often succeeds in trapping the criminal where law-and-order/police officials do not. Intensity, anxiety, and suspense build to a climax, often with the detective using violence to solve the crime.

• FILM NOIR: Meaning "black film" and describing Hollywood films of the 1940s set in the criminal underworld, much darker in mood and mise-en-scène than what had come before. With stylized lighting and cinematography, they were shot in black and white using nighttime urban settings. They feature morally ambiguous protagonists, corrupt institutions, dangerous women and convoluted plots. Hard-boiled detective films focus on a protagonist who represents the law or a more ambiguous version of it, such as a private investigator. Usually these individuals must battle a criminal element (and sometimes the police) to solve a mystery or personal obsession.

• NEO-NOIR: A term used to describe film noir-style movies made from the 1970s onward.

• HONG KONG NEW WAVE: Introduced sophisticated style, lucrative production methods, and a canny use of western elements to the low-budget Hong Kong kung-fu film genre of the 1970s.

• BLAXPLOITATION: Suggests the economic exploitation of black film audiences (and in particular the identification of an urban market likely to attend films about streetwise African-American protagonists), made possible in part by the black power movement in the early 1970s.

• ROAD MOVIES: Focuses on cars or motorcycles as the center of narratives about wandering or driven characters. Structurally, the narrative develops forward, usually along a linear path, as an odyssey for an undefined place or freedom. Encounters are episodic and disconnected, and traveling shots of open roads and countryside are the stylistic heart of the genre.

• HORROR FILMS: With origins in gothic literature, they seek to frighten the viewer through - supernatural or predator characters; narratives built on suspense, dread, and surprise; and visual compositions that anticipate and manipulate shocking sights. Invoking our hidden fears in a terrifying, shocking finale, captivating and entertaining us in a cathartic experience. Features a range of styles, from the silent classics to today's CGI monsters and deranged mutant humans.

• PHYSICAL HORROR: A sub-genre in which psychology takes second place to the depiction of graphic violence.

• PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR: Locates the dangers that threaten normal life in the minds of bizarre and deranged individuals.

• SUPERNATURAL HORROR: A spiritual evil erupting into the human realm, to avenge a moral wrong or for no explainable reason. Horror is combined with science fiction when the menace is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. There are many minor sub-genres, defined by the main character or content; e.g. Dracula, Frankenstein, war, slasher, teen terror, serial killers, satanic, swamp, etc.

• SCIENCE FICTION FILMS: Often quasi-scientific, visionary and imaginative - with heroes, distant planets, impossible quests, fantastic places, shadowy villains, futuristic technology, unknowable forces and scary monsters, created by mad scientists, by nuclear havoc or from outer space. An offshoot of fantasy films, they share similarities with action/adventure films. They often express the potential of technology to destroy humankind, overlapping with horror, particularly when technology or alien life becomes malevolent, as in the 'Atomic Age' films of the 1950s.

Science Fiction has a prophetic nature (attempting to figure out or depict the future) and is often just another genre set in a future time. They commonly express society's anxiety about technology and how to control the impact of technological and environmental change on contemporary society, or the potential to destroy humankind through apocalyptic events, or through the loss of personal individuality. There are often encounters with beings (sometimes from our subconscious, sometimes from space or other dimensions) that are unearthed to fight an eternal struggle (good vs. evil), played out by recognizable archetypes. Many SF films feature fantastic journeys, set either on Earth, into outer space, or (most often) into the future.

• WAR (ANTI-WAR) FILMS: These acknowledge the courage, horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting on land, sea, or air provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. Often paired with other genres, such as action, adventure, drama, romance, comedy (black), suspense, epics and westerns. They often take a denunciatory approach toward warfare, and they may include POW tales, stories of military operations, and training. Sections include: US Civil War, WW I, Spanish Civil War, WW II, Korean War, Vietnamese War, WW III.

• WESTERNS: Typically characterized by characters whose physical and mental toughness separate them from civilization; narratives that follow some version of a quest into the natural world; and a stylistic emphasis on open, natural spaces and settings. One of the oldest, most enduring genres with very recognizable elements (six-guns, horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.). They are REVISIONIST; re-invented, expanded, and spoofed.

• EPIC WESTERNS: Concentrate on action and movement, developing a heroic character whose quests and battles serve to define history.

• SPAGHETTI WESTERNS: A hybrid genre, consisting of Italian films of the 1960s, personified by Sergio Leone.

• POLITICAL WESTERNS: More critical films, in which the ideology that always informed the genre are foregrounded; the heroism associated with individual independence and the use of violence naturalized in epic westerns become precisely that which is questioned.

• The EXISTENTIAL WESTERN: An introspective version of the genre, the traditional hero is troubled by his changing social status and his own self-doubts.

• MUSICALS (DANCE) FILMS: A diverse genre with characters who express their emotions and thoughts as songs; plots paused or moved forward by musical numbers; and spectacular settings. It emphasizes musical scores or song and dance routines (usually with music or dance integrated as part of the film narrative), or films that are centered on combinations of music, dance, song or choreography.

• REALISTIC MUSICALS: A type in which the idyllic and redemptive moments of song and dance are integrated into natural, everyday lives.

• ANIMATED MUSICAL: Consist of cartoon figures (sometimes blended with live action) and stories to present songs and music. Major sub-genres include the MUSICAL COMEDY or the concert film.

• DOCUMENTARY FILM: A non-fiction film that presents (presumably) real objects, people, and events. Expressive and persuasive positions are used in documentaries to articulate a perspective either as the expression of emotions, opinions, beliefs, or some other personal or social position or as an attempt to persuade an audience to believe or feel a certain way.

• POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY explores human suffering and struggle or celebrates the activities of common men and women with a balance of aesthetic objectivity and political purpose. NATURE and ETHNOGRAPHIC documentary reveal the natural world, its cultures and peoples in the most authentic terms possible, without imposing the filmmaker’s interpretation on that experience. REENACTMENTS present the recreation of presumably real events, but in a theatrical manner.

• CINÉMA VÉRITÉ means "cinema truth"; a style of documentary filmmaking first practiced by the French in the late 1950s and early 1960s that used unobtrusive lightweight cameras and sound equipment to capture a real-life situation; the parallel U.S. movement is called direct cinema.

• DIRECT CINEMA is a documentary style originating in the United States in the 1960s that aims to observe an unfolding situation as unobtrusively as possible. It is related to cinéma vérité.

• THIRD CINEMA refers to a group of films and filmmakers from a variety of Third World (and some European) countries with an agenda that rejects technical perfection in opposition to commercial traditions and embraces film as the voice of the people.

• LESBIAN AND GAY FILM THEORY: Among other things, they critique and supplement feminist approaches by pointing out that films allow for more flexible ways of seeing and experiencing visual pleasure than the binarisms (mutually exclusive opposites) of male vs. female, seeing vs. seen, and being vs. desiring.

FILM SUB-GENRES: A specialized, more limited version of a general genre, often by refining it with an adjective, such as the spaghetti western or slapstick comedy. These are identifiable sub-classes of genre, with their own distinctive subject matter, style, formulas, and iconography.

Many films straddle several film genres. Action films and Adventure films have tremendous crossover potential as film genres. Both types come in a variety of forms or hybrids: thrillers, crime-drama, war, horror, sci-fi or space, etc. Oftentimes, action films are great box-office hits, but lack critical appeal because of their two-dimensional heroes and villains.

Minor Sub-Genres: Aviation films, buddy movies, capers, chase films, espionage, the 'fallen' woman, jungle movies, legal films, martial arts, medical, military, motorcycle movies, parodies, sport films, police films, political films, prison films, religious films, slasher films, swashbucklers, etc;

Non-Genre Film Categories: There are also many non-genre film categories that crossover many traditional genre film types, such as: Animated Films, British Films, Childrens/Kids/Family Films, Classic Films, Cult Films, Documentary Films, Serial Films, Sexual/Erotic Films.