Title: AMERICAN%20FILM%20GENRES%20TET2040e%203%20op
1AMERICAN FILM GENRESTET2040e 3 op
- lecturer Eija Niskanen
- eija.niskanen_at_gmail.com
2American Film Genres syllabushttp//www.helsinki.
fi/taitu/tet/Americangenres.htm
- 18.4. Definitions and theories of film genre in
the context of Hollywood - 19.4. at 10-12 The birth and historical-industrial
development of American film genres - 19.4. at 12-14 Genre examples The gangster film,
Sophisticated comedy - 21.4. Genres, society, and ideology The western
- (Note_at_ room 8 )
- 25.4. Film noir and melodrama genres or film
styles? - 26.4. Genres The musical
3Requirements
- Participation in lectures 80
- home reading (articles) and/or viewing of films
- Either a study diary or two essays. The essays or
study diary should comment on the lectures, the
films seen, and the home reading, as well as
possibly draw on examples of own viewing of films
(for example contemporary examples of American
genre films). - In both cases the minimum requirements are
total 10-12 sheets - Sheet approx. 30 x 60 characters (dbl
spacing) Check Word file/properties/statistics - Written work must be submitted within two weeks
after the last lecture to the lecturer by email,
in a word or rich text format. - for writing directions, see Department home page
- http//www.helsinki.fi/taitu/english/film_telev
ision_writtenwork.htm
4The course is about
- The course focuses on the meaning and centrality
of genre films in Hollywood cinema. Topics
covered include birth and evolvement of genres
side by side with the rise (and later demise) of
the studio system, major Hollywood film genres,
such as the western, musical and sophisticated
comedy in historical light up until today. All
this will be discussed both from the industrial
and aesthetic point of view, including the social
and ideological interpretation of genres.
Theoretical approaches include the terminological
definition of genre as well the problematics of
classifying genres/styles such as melodrama and
film noir.
5What is genre?
- genre type or kind? theme or form?
- genre comes from the French (and originally
Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'. - literary genre Aristotles Poetics tragedy,
epic, lyric Medieval lit. for ex. romance - poetry, prose and drama, within which there are
further divisions, such as tragedy and comedy
within the category of drama - genres in painting landscape, portrait,
religious etc. - mass media genres born
- film genre
- national film genres
- film industry and genre production,
distribution, exhibition, studio marketing
6Major Hollywood genres
- Action-adventure
- Biopics
- Comedy
- Detective, gansgster, suspense thriller
- Epics and spectacles
- Horror, science fiction, fantasy
- Musicals
- Social problem films
- Teenpics
- War films
- Westerns
- Film noir
- Melodrama and the womans film
7On genre
- Thomas Schatz "All film genres treat some form
of threatviolent or otherwiseto the social
order" - narrative closure (genre films vs. art films)
- technique, style, mode, formula or thematic
grouping may be treated as a genre - David Bordwell 'any theme may appear in any
genre - Robert Stam, genre definition often based on
story content, borrowed from literature etc. - 'family resemblances' among texts
- How we define a genre depends on our purposes
8Film genre - critical definitions historically
- books articles in the U.S. and Europe, 1940s
and 50s - French New wave critics and filmmakers Andre
Bazin, Claude Chabrol to take Hollywood
seriously - 1960-70s UK US academic study, to displace
auteur criticism (Cahiers du Cinema, Screen) - phases iconographic (Erwin Panofsky)
- structuralist, semiotic, psychoanalytic,
ideological analysis (Screen writers) - feminist interest in genres, esp. womens films
- narrative-stylistic industry history study
(Tino Balio, David Bordwell, Steven Neale) - cognitive study (Noel Burch on horror)
9Ideological study on a genre cycle
- To Live and Die in L.A., William Friedkin, 1985
- Reaganism in 80s films, Jane Feuer, Susan
Jeffords
10Genre and audience
- audience knowledge and expectation
- specific systems of expectation and hypothesis
- gt recognition and understanding
- verisimilitude probability, possible, likely
propriety - Todorov generic verismilitude and social or
cultural verisimilitude - rules of the genre - the audience uses the
concept of genre in order to make sense of a
particular movie - Semiotically, a genre can be seen as a shared
code between the producers and interpreters of
texts included within it. - Alastair Fowler 'readers learn genres gradually,
usually through unconscious familiarization'
11Pure genre?
- often genres are hybrid, overlap each others
- genre or style? melodrama film noir
- genre cycles new gebres (catastrophe movies)
- genre parodies
- sub-genres
- cross-cultural hybridization
- Noel Carroll on horror
- 1. Discvovery plotgt onset, discovery,
confirmation, confrontation (sexuality) - The Isle of Dead, Mark Robson, RKO, 1945
- 2. Overreacher plotgt preparation for experiment,
experiment, experiement goes wrong, confrontation
of the monster - The Body Snatcher, Robert Wise, RKO, 1945
12Casablanca, Variety, Dec. 2, 1942
- Exhibs, in selling the picture, will do well to
bear in mind that it goes heavy on the love
theme. Although the title and Humphrey Bogart's
name convey the impression of high adventure
rather than romance, there's plenty of the latter
for the femme trade. Adventure is there, too, but
it's more as exciting background to the
Bogart-Bergman heart department. - Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros, 1941
13Genre evolution (trad. view)
- John Cawelti 1970s changes in American genre
movies. Aware of themselves as myth, genre movies
of the period responded in four ways humorous
burlesque, nostalgia, demythologization, and
reaffirmation. - Francis Ford Coppola's (b. 1939) The Godfather
(1972) - Robert Altman's (b. 1925) McCabe and Mrs. Miller,
The Long Goodbye (1973), Nashville (1975) - Rocky Horror Picture Show
14Genre evolution 2 critique
- Rick Altman (studied musicals)
- intra- and intergeneric processes of genre
- criticises the compartmentalised manner to study
genres - generic evolution, later genre films are assumed
to build on earlier films of the same genre - Thomas Schatz's examination of Westerns in
Hollywood Genres (1981), which focusses almost
exclusively on the work of John Ford - Altman cross-pollination occurs across genres
15Genre evolution (cont.)
- almost all classical Hollywood studio directors
worked in more than one genre Howard Hawks
directed westerns, screwball comedies, and
science fiction films - genres start out with a set of semantic elements,
and only achieve true genre status when they
complete a process of evolving an accompanying
syntax. After all, the syntactic and semantic
elements both continue to shift after this
process is completed. - A set of promising semantics simply hijack an
existing syntactic framework from another genre. - science fiction exists almost entirely as a set
of semantics). There is, no syntactic framework
existent a parasitical genre, relying on hybrids
between its semantics and the syntactic
frameworks taken from elsewhere. science fiction
/ horror films (Alien)
16Hollywood film industry and genre
17Classical Hollywood period 1925-1950s 8 majors
and others
- Big five vertically integrated
- Loews-MGM
- Paramount Publix
- Fox (20th Century Fox)
- Warner Bros
- RKO
- Little three production and distribution
- Universal
- Columbia
- United Artists (UA)
- Poverty Row producers (Republic, Monogram, Mascot
etc.) - Independent producers Goldwyn, Selznick
- Animation studios Fleischer, Disney
18Studio genres?
- Paramount European style, Josef von Steinberg
Marlene Dietrich, Ernst Lubitsch, Maurice
Chevalier, Marx Brothers, Mae West, Bob Hope
etc... comedy Cecil B DeMille gt historical
films - Loews-MGM visible producers Louis B. Mayer,
Irving Thalberg, lavish style and sets, musicals - 20th Century Fox Shirley Temple
- Warner Bros smaller budgets than MGM, James
Cagney, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Erroll
Flynn, recycled plots, Busby Berkeley musical,
gangster, problem film, bio-pic, war films,
19Studios and genre cont.
- RKO King Kong (1933), Fred Astaire Ginger
Rogers musicals (1934-38), distribbuted Disney, i
the 1940 Orson Welles and Broadway plays, Citizen
Kane (1941), creative B unit (horror, crime...) - Universal visually striking horrors w/ bela
Lugosi and Boris Karloff (Dracula,
Frankenstein...), targeted small-town audiences
(Deanna Durbin), Bs (Sherlock Holmes series) and
slapstick comedies -
20Studio and genre 3
- Columbia borrowd stars and directors from other
studios (for ex. His Girl Friday/Howard Hawks),
Frank Capra, B westerns, 3 Stooges comedies - UA D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin
and Douglas Fairbanks owned UA 1935 on,
distributed others films (British imports),
released indep. producers films, slapstick
musicals w Eddie Cantor, some Hitchcock films,
Wuthering Heights
21Independents made
- prestige pictures (Selznick Gone with the Wind
for MGM) - Oscar Michaeaux - black films
- different language films (Yiddish films)
22Studio differentiation of films
- A and B films prod. budget
- A superspecials (prestige, big budget musicals
w. top stars 1milj., Selznick, Golwyn as
producers ) - upscaling genres, for ex.
Monumental Westerns - Gone with the Wind, prod. David O. Selznick,
1939, dir. George Cukor Victor Fleming - specials (bulk of the class A, normal length),
- programmers (lowest budget, original stories,
minor stars, shorter, even 50 mins, Poverty Row
made only these)
23post-1960
- vertical integration declared illegal in 1948
big five sold their theaters - demographic and lifestyle changes
- decline in film attendance, television
- inhouse staff laid off
- RKO collapsed
- From Production Code to Ratings system
24post-60s cont.
- big five make less but more expensive films,
abandoned Bs, widescreen, other new technologies,
blockbusters, co-productions, , international
markets, target audiences production of TV
programs, screening film library on TV, acting as
distributros, facility rentals, financiers etc.
for independents - stars went indie talent agents rise
- one-off production basis package production
- drive-in theater, multiplex, abandonment of
production code in 1968 - congloramate take-overs of studios
25The New Hollywood
- package and indep. prod.
- mini-majors (Miramax, New Line, Tri-Star) along
the old majors - freelance workers
- a few heavily pre-marketed blockbusters, blanket
release, made for teens and 20s audience, special
effects and sound innovations, spin-offs and
tie-ins (CDs, games etc.), video, DVD, cable
income - synergies, global, multi-media
26Media conglomerates
- Bertelsmann
- Sony-Columbia
- Disney
- General Electric
- News Corporation
- Time Warner
- Viacom
- Vivendi
27New Hollywood cont.
- recycling of established stories, characters,
ideas and performers, sequels 1970s and 80s but
same in 1930s - audience movie consciousness popular culture
consciousness - allusion, pastiche, hybridity
- multi-platform popular culture already in the
1930s, Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, sales of sheet
music etc. - so different but same
28Genre samples Ideological claim
- Hollywood film, like US society, should be seen
as a contested terrain and films could be
interpreted as a struggle nof representation over
how to construct a social world and everyday
life. - problem who decides in practice? Studios,
audience...?
29Genre example Ganster
- The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
- Warner Bros early 1930s cycle of topicals
- Little Caesar
- Public Enemy
- Scarface
- star vehicles James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson,
early Humphrey Bogart - The Production Code (Hays Code), 1930, started
enforcing 1934, self-regulation within the
industry - The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors
Association (MPPDA
30Gansgster genre deals with
- threats to law and order
- social stability within and urban society (vs.
western) - public sphere as opposed to the domestic sphere
of social comedies, melodramas and musicals - dear and fascination of criminals
- cultural conflicts, economic rise - making the
American Dream - attractive, vital characters
31Clash with censors
- text insert at the beg of Little Caesar
- "to honestly depict an environment that exists
today in a certain strata of American life,
rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal - ending crime does not pay
- later same actors played touch cops
32Later gansters
- The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956
- The Godfather, 1972
- GoodFellas, Casino, etc. Mafia cycle
- American Ganster, 2007
331970s Blaxploitation Shaft
34Genre sample Sophisticated comedy
- womans film x comedy
- the influence of literary naturalism on the
cinema - sexual antagonism
- A film stars
- a decisive shift in 1920s American cinematic
sensibility and taste-from 'hokum' to
'sophistication,' Lea Jacobs - domestic x womens films comedies of remarriage
35Sophisticated comedy/screwball comedy
- Bringing Up Baby screwball comedy 1934 It
Happened One Night, Twentieth Century (1934) - CLIP Desire, dir. Frank Borgaze, 1936
- CLIP Arsenic and Old Lace, dir. Frank Capra,
Warner Bros 1941, stars Cary Grant - CLIP Gis Girl Friday, dir. Howard Hawks, 1940
36The new romance
- Neale Krutnik the new romance
- When Harry Met Sally, 1989
- Woody Allen-like "nervous romance"