Posted 24 Feb. 2004
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Introduction to Film, Section 2
Week 6 (Feb. 16)
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6:05-6:35
6:35-7:20
7:20-7:30
7:30-9:30
Quiz 1
Film Genres
Break
View A Simple Plan
Note: No extra-credit question accepted tonight!
PLEASE TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES
PUT DEVICES AND BOOKS AWAY
ON ANSWER SHEET
NAME (LAST, FIRST)—FILL IN BUBBLES
IDENTIFICATION—Tech ID—FILL IN BUBBLES
If you need a pencil, I can loan you one
If you need a Scantron answer sheet, you can buy one for 25 cents.
If you finish early, please go to the lobby or remain quietly in your seat
DO NOT TALK IN THE AUDITORIUM UNTIL THE QUIZ IS OVER!
FILM GENRES
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Genre is a type of film
Way of grouping and classifying a number of films.
Genre also convenient as marketing device
Large Groupings:
 Fiction
 Non-Fiction (or Documentary)
 Experimental (or Avant-Garde)
Sub-Groupings of Fiction Films
Some specific to particular national cinemas and historical periods
Japan: Jidai-geki—Period films set before modernization
Gendai-geki—Stories of contemporary life
Yakuza-eigi—Gangster film
Pinku-eigi—soft-core pornography
Anime—animation, usually with highly stylized narratives
and graphics
India:
“Bollywood” films (usually produced in Bombay/Mumbai)
Different genres, but most are “musicals” in some sense
American genres:
Can be defined by different criteria and characteristics
 Setting (Westerns)
 Type of action (Singing and dancing in Musicals)
 Technology--setting and props (Science Fiction)
 Types of characters (Gangster Film)
 Narrative Events (Melodrama, Action Film)
 Effect on audience (Comedy, Horror)
 Style of setting, lighting (Film Noir)
Genre conventions
 common elements that are accepted by audience (singing and dancing in musicals,
magic in fantasies, faster-than-light travel in SF, etc.)
Genres are also marked by iconography (images with symbolic value):
 guns in Westerns
 "futuristic" technology in science fiction
 women's makeup and costume in melodrama
 money and material goods in gangster films, etc.
Genre Example:
The “women’s film” (“melodrama,” “tearjerker,” “chick flick,” etc.)
Centers on female character
Centers on personal relationships: love, motherhood
Often involves conflict and sacrifice on part of character
All versions of A Star Is Born are examples
May be in musical format (Lady in the Dark,
Dancer in the Dark)
Can combine with other genres (Crime drama: Mildred Pierce,
SF: the Alien movies, Western: Missing)
Evolves in form to meet changing social definitions of “woman,”
“femininity,” “family,” etc. (Stella Dallas, All That Heaven
Allows, An Unmarried Woman, Far from Heaven)
SUBGENRES
subcategories of individual genres
subgenres have own common elements, conventions and iconography
Examples:
 Westerns: "Spaghetti” Westerns
 emerged in late 1960s, reflect violence of era
 associated with Italian director Sergio Leone and after
 Hero is anti-heroic, quiet, ruthless
 themes emphasize violence, ambigous morality, but also humor
 A Fistful of Dollars
 Once upon a time in the West
 The Unforgiven
 Psychological Westerns
 emerged in 1950s
 Westerns as entertainment had moved to TV
 writers and directors used film genre to explore more serious themes
 interested in how characters react and relate to violence
 probe issues of community, morality and responsibility
 Shane
 The Gunfighter
 High Noon
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Horror Film subgenres:
 monster films (Frankenstein, Jaws, Alien)
 slasher films (Halloween, Friday the 13th,
Nightmare on Elm Street)
 psychological horror films (Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear)
Comedy subgenres:
 "Screwball" comedy (My Man Godfrey)
 romantic comedy (When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail)
 "dumb" comedy (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something about Mary, Beavis and
Butthead Do America, Zoolander)
 Genre parodies (Airplane!, Hot Shots, The Naked Gun,
Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, Scary Movie)
Individual films may combine genres in different ways
 Citizen Kane is newspaper film, fictional biography, has elements of comedy, etc.
 Titanic is romance film and historical film
Genres shift in form and popularity as tastes and social conditions change
Example: The Crime Thriller—A Simple Plan
1998, Directed by Sam Raimi
With Bill Paxton (Hank), Billy Bob Thornton (Jacob), Bridget Fonda (Sarah), Brent
Briscoe (Lou)
Study Questions:
1. What are the main characters like before and when they discover the money? How
does the discovery begin to change them?
2. How do the complications in the narrative arise? What forces outside of the main
characters themselves cause events to change?
3. What role does the money itself as an object play in this film? How is it used? Where
is it seen?
4. How does the rural Minnesota setting affect our expectations? How do specific places
and scenes work through their use of buildings, objects, people, and other elements? Do
any of them seem to have some significance besides providing a setting or moving the
narrative along?
5. What does the film say about the nature of making plans? About the nature of human
nature?
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