Understanding Film Genres: Definition, Characteristics, and Evolution, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Cinematica

Scarica Understanding Film Genres: Definition, Characteristics, and Evolution e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Cinematica solo su Docsity! FILM GENRES - FIRST SEMESTER October - November 2023 October 3rd 2023 Tasks: - Prepare ideas for the essays in a month (groups of 2/3 people). Essays must concern the topics. - Exams on appointment!! Essay presentation + final oral exam. - International articles as part of material (on Moodle) What are genre movies? Commercial films, movies who tell familiar stories, familiar characters in familiar situations. According to Richard Jameson, films belong to genres as people belong to families or ethnic groups. In many respects, the study of cinematographic genres is just an extension of the study of literary genres. The study of literary genres of course is much older than film studies, for example Aristotele already discovered something about tragedies talking about inner analysis etc. Generally it is taken for granted that genres actually exist with boundaries and identities. We usually have the description and definition of already existing genres rather than the formation of new interpretative categories. Much of genres theory has dealt with a pre-defined and universally recognised original and its offshoots (branches), or with the internal structures attributed to such texts. It means that we are talking about flexible categories. It’s not a good idea to take it for granted that film genres do not evolve, because they’re not stable. 1 Film genres are moving, especially nowadays. The paper we’ll read will make it clearer. Similar texts would systematically produce similar readings, meanings and uses. The expectations and the reaction of the public are objects of limited interest. The history of genres occupies an unstable and not well-defined place with respect to the theory of genres, that is, from the synchronic study, because it would re-shuffle the cards. On some occasions the history of genres has been used creatively to support specific institutional intentions, for example to create a new canon of works in support of an innovative theory. Using the concept of genre means trying to simplify the communication process. Genre means simplification. Genre is therefore not so much (or rather, not only) a property of texts, but rather a product derived from communicative practices. For example, if we watch a pornography movie in an academic context it is different from other contexts, so these are really important and they change things and perspectives. - Extract —> Django, 1966, last 7 minutes - Tarantino pays particular attention to these kind of movies, especially Italian ones. Genre is magic because it is a useful category, bridging multiple concerns. According to many film theories, genre perform multiple operations simultaneously: - to provide the formulas that drive production - to constitute the structures that define individual texts - to program decisions The interpretation of generic film depends directly on the audience’s generic expectations. 2 - Patterns of the story - Relationships between the characters - Key-metaphores - Aesthetic hierarchies - Extract —> The Searchers, 1956, opening scene - Is it true that Hollywood has an excessively obvious cinema? To understand Hollywood cinema we have: - Production and distribution strategies - Modes of representation - Continuity system and transparency (the way Hollywood chooses in order to let the spectator understand what he watches without cuts, without problems) - Construction of the myth of Hollywood in the world imaginary (immaginario). This has to do with the power of Hollywood in shaping the spectator’s point of view The opening song of The Searchers is called Sons of the pioneers, written by Tex Ritter and Danny Knight in 1956. Which elements of iconography help us to understand that this is a western movie? The bricks, the font used, the music, “starring John Wayne”, the large format, “Texas 1868” (three years after the end of the Civil War). The first frame we see is one of the most studied of the cinema history. We see the Canyon, iconic landscape, and Ethan coming home. The reaction of the characters is of surprise: maybe they didn’t hope to see him alive again. Let’s concentrate on the function of the objects: Ethan is still carrying objects from the War. We’re wondering what he did in these three years (he is a loser, he lost the War). The song also is wondering that (What makes a man to wander?What makes a man to roam? What makes a man leave bed and board and turn his back on home? Ride away, ride away, ride away) 5 He doesn’t remember exactly who is talking with. The editing system is clear, transparent, with a shot following the others quite easily. Every single shot reinforces the previous one. From abstraction, distance, to something concrete and physical (Ethan rejoins the family who embraces him again) Recurring strategies of the Majors (with A level budgets): - Standardization in diversification - Specialization and connotation of the different Studios - Precise classification of films according to production commitment - Eclecticism of thematic choices —> Majors try to give audience every time on a single subject something different, adding new themes, in order to be various. The result is the following point - Recognition and predictability by the viewer - Interaction with information media - Control based precise gender distinctions and moral parameters - Construction of temple rooms to welcome the “faithful” (i fedeli) - Vertical concentration (Majors own not only film studios, but also cinema and distribution (such as newspapers also), so they’re able to force the market to do whatever they want), profit maximization, oligopoly (contrasted in time) - Domination of the market but also the imagination —> everybody recognises what they’re watching, for example the typical western landscape Where do genres come from? What happens usually considering the origins of the film genres? Much of what passes from genre history is actually no more than description of genre life circle: a genre begins, grows up and comes to a decadent phase at the end. Once identified, the genre is suited as a generic prototipe. For example, before the Western was fully constituted as a genre, 6 there were “cowboy pictures”, as evidenced by Moving Picture News, in April 1911. - Extract —> The Great Train Robbery, Porter, 1903 - As we can see, in the Origins cinema we can’t empathise with the characters, because the camera stays far from them. The last shot of the movie is very famous: the man shooting at us. Charles Musters presents the movie not as a western, but as a “railway subgenre”. Porter is also the director of Life of a cowboy (1906). At the time Indian films were a particular genre. “Genre” at the beginning was just an adjective, not a substantive. Jack Chadian says: <<Genres are cultural metaphors and physics mirrors of things we don’t know until we study the films in which they are presented>>. Rick Altman also writes: - Film often gain generic identity from similar defects and failures rather than from shared qualities and triumphs - The early history of film genres is characterized, it would seem, not by purposeful borrowing from a single pre-existing non-film parent genre, but by apparently incidental borrowing from several unrelated genres - Even when a genre already exists in other media, the film genre of the same name cannot simply be borrowed from non-film sources, it must be recreated - Before they are fully constituted through the junction of persistent material and consistent use of that material, nascent genres traverse a period when their only unity derives from shared surface characteristics deployed within other generic contexts perceived as dominant 7 All Hollywood films have essential characteristics in common: - Dualistic —> cultural values/countercultural values (bi-focal texts) - Repetitive —> the details change but not the basic scheme - Cumulative —> repetition of situations, themes and icons - Predictable —> pleasure of reconfirmation > novelty —> false suspence - Intertextual —> every western harks back to the history of the western rather than history of the West - Symbolic —> symbolic use of images, sounds, situations - Functional —> as a game and a ritual they resolve (even fictitously) contradictions that society is not entirely able to keep under control Genre is an articulated concept and it has a plurality of meanings and functions: - For industry it is a draft project - For the text it is a structure, a formal scheme - For the promoters it is a label for the advertising strategy - For the viewer it is a contract How does the cinema audience choose a film? What information is it based on? What role do genres play in defining consumption? The trailer is still the most important and effective tool. The trailer must contain details that allow us to recognise the product we are going to see. The trailer gives a form to the expectation of the spectator and create new discourse using a plurality of relations. A paratext is a text itself which accompanies the primary text, that gives more informations about the primary text. If trailer is a paratext, we have to do with strategies of promotions that are different from the primary text. We have to involve spectators in a specific discourse of paratext and we can choose different ways to do that. In the Golden Era advertising was the 5/10% of the entire budget. For the big movies the advertising expense can also reach the 60% of the total expense. For example for Lord of Rings advertising has even 10 the equal expense of the final expense. As specialists and official sources say, trailer cost up to 2/3% of the total advertising campaign, but they contribute up to 40%. Trailer is a format which gives special informations about the movie. Sometimes trailers give some emotions to the spectator. Torben Grodal elaborates a map of the narrative forms of the filmic experience. We are going to analyse the way for example Hitchcock gives us the idea of the movie using the trailer. Carl Plantiga in Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator’s Experience elaborates some spectatorial types of emotion: - Global —> Long duration, extended over significant portions of the film viewing experience (expectation, suspense, curiosity) - Local —> Short duration, often more intense than global emotions (fright, surprise, disgust, euphoria, excitement) - Direct/straight —> They have as their object the content of the narrative and its unfolding (curiosity, suspense, expectation, surprise, fright) 11 - Simpathetic/antipathetic —> They have as their object the interests, purposes and well-being of the characters, both for good (sympathetic emotions) and for evil (antipathetic emotions). (compassion, pity, admiration, happiness vs anger, disdain, socio-moral disgust) - Meta-emotions —> They concern the reactions of the spectator himself or of other spectators (pride, sense of guilt, shame, curiosity, indignation, surprise) - Fictional —> They concern elements of the fictional world of the film (of various kinds) - Artifactuals —> They have as their object the film as an artifact (admiration, fascination, gratitude, fun, indignation, anger, impatience Model structures of the trailer in American cinema From the Twenties, Showing as announcing: - Introduction - Title - Development - Final title A precise idea of the film is not provided in the scenes shown From the Sixties-Seventies, storytelling as selling: - Exposure - Triggering event - Conflcit - Final title “Two-thirds structure ": the protagonist presents the first two acts and then a cliffhanger, a moment of unresolved tension or a question about the hero's fate. 12 for example western, by conventions of setting and conflicts, but by more subtle (sottili) qualities of tone and mood. It’s a specific period of film history, like German expressionism or the French New Wave. In general, film noir refers to those Hollywood films of the Forties and early Fifties that portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption>>. Some examples behind. - Force of Evil, 1948, Polonsky, beginning - We can see an urban landscape, with some contrast of dark and light. We can see a big contrast between skyscrapers and an old church (we are in Wall Street). Who gives us the informations? That’s a voice over that comes from nowhere, and it’s speaking. Often, noir films are told in voice over in flashbacks. We usually review something which is already happened. Main characters are often caught in circumstances out of their control. They face situations and they don’t know what to do. - Detour, 1945, Ulmer, beginning - It’s a low-budget movie. Some say that noir protagonists are only men and, even if it’s not true, there’s a huge presence of masculinity in those movies, it’s a condition of post-war. Women are usually sexualised (femme-fatales). Noir is the perfect example for joining two different fundamental moods: - The crime line, investigations —> central point of noirs - Melodrama of passions —> the character is involved in something related to crime, but the second plot is usually related to a woman he desires In Detour we can recognise the contrast between light and dark, the voice-over narration, typical elements of noir movies. 15 - The killers, 1946, Robert Siodmak, beginning - The movie comes from Ernest Hemingway’ book. The dialogues written by Hemingway are strictly followed. Opening scenes of noirs have kind of unity of time and spaces. What are the main stylistic features of these movies? Paul Schrader answers in his Notes on Film Noir: - The majority of scenes are lit for night - As in German expressionism, oblique and vertical lines are preferred to horizontal - The actors and settings are often given equal lighting emphasis - Compositional tension is preferred to physical action - There seems to be an almost Freudian attachment to water - There is a love for romantic narration - A complex chronological order is frequently used to reinforce the feelings of hopelessness and lost time —> manipulation of time - The HOW is always more important than the WHAT. Filmic discourse is always more important of what is told. - Double indemnity, 1944, Billy Wilder, beginning - Double indemnity is a summary of what we’re talking about. The movie comes from Mccain’s novel. During the Fourties there were contrasts between directors and writers. The complexity of the first person narrator was the matter for discussion —> the directors preferred the third-person narrator. The main character knows everything and decides when and what to tell us. 16 Dashiell Hammett on The Maltese Falcon —> on Moodle - The Maltese Falcon, 1929, John Huston, beginning - Humphrey Bogart is a central character of noir cinema. In this movie he plays Samuel Spade, the Maltese Falcon. October 17th 2023 Meeting: Giuseppe Boccassini https://giuseppeboccassini.com/ RAGTAG It’s not narrative in a classical way. The editing proceeded in a chronological order. October 24th 2023 Science fiction It’s hard, if not impossible, to classify the film genres. Genres are an impure category, and strict taxonomies means difficulty in dealing with genres. The generic classification is only one of the possible ways of ordering cinema. Raphaelle Moine in Les genres du cinéma says that the generic classification is only one of the possible ways of ordering cinema: - for Pariscope 22 genres categories are useful: animated film, adventure, comedy drama, comedy, short film, cartoon, documentary, psychological drama, drama, erotic, fantastic, dance film, musical film, noir, political, war, horror, karate, detective, science fiction, thriller, western 17 - Box-office success of sci-fi films in 1950 and 1951 - Re-release of King Kong (1933) in 1952 —> mutant and monsters subgenres Many of these films have been remade, for example The thing, The blob, Red planet Mars etc. Science fiction deals with the scientific possibility that explores the unknown. Eric Rabkin affirms that: «It consists of a story that both warns against and applauds the advance of science and technology [while] it consistently considers the problems and possibilities posed by meeting the new, the unexpected, the alien. Science fiction draws its considerable entertainment value from deep mythic or social wells. […] Science fiction is a phenomenon that arises wherever modern science and technology make people aware of new problems or cause them to view old problems in new ways». Vivian Sobchack says: «If science fiction is about science at all, it is not about abstract science, science in a vacuum. In the SF film, science is always related to society, and its positive and negative aspects are seen in light of their social effect». - The thing from another world - The movie was set in the Arctic Circle, but the problem was the daylight was available only for two hours a day. The sense of mystery we can find in the movie made it famous. There are no special effects for strategy, like for example in film noir. Then we find the encounter with the alien, somebody different. - The day the earth stood still - 20 Locations are exclusively on the earth, there’s not space. - The incredible shrinking man - There are no monsters here. The terrible effects of atomic radiations become known, so such films contains also the fear for new sciences. We can see it as a mirror of the distrust of the period. In 1950s science fiction’s paradoxical charm: the simplicity - The fly - The famous fly’s point of view: 20 frames. Susan Sontag in The Imagination of the Disaster affirms that: «There is a historically specifiable twist which intensifies the anxiety. I mean, the trauma suffered by everyone in the middle of the 20th century when it became clear that, from now on to the end of human history, every person would spend his individual life under the threat not only of individual death, which is certain, but of something almost insupportable psychologically: collective incineration and extinction which could come at any time, virtually without warning». Four major themes in the sci-fi of the Fifties: - Extraterrestrial travel —> Destination Moon, 1950; Forbidden Planet, 1956 - Alien invasion and infiltration —> The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951; The Thing, 1951; The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956 - Mutants, metamorphosis and resurrection of extinct species —> The Fly, 1958; The Incredibile Shrinking Man, 1957 - Near annihilation or End of the Earth —> The Day the World Ended, 1956; On the Beach, 1959 21 - The invasion of the body snatchers - 30 ottobre 2023 Expectation and verisimilitude If we think about The invasion of the body snatchers it’s not easy to understand what is appropriate or not. The ending of the movie was meant to be another one by authors. But a mix of sensorships, political opportunities and decisions tried to give the movie a possible ending which is very different from the original ideas. The Italian version for many years lacked of some shots. This allows us to make hypothesis about what was happening. In the first version there wasn’t a happy ending. Orson Welles was supposed to be the narrator, the voice over. The atmosphere in the movie pays a tribute to noir movie. The reading of the film follow three major models: - allegory with an anti-communist function —> the pods (baccelli) stand for - The film invites the viewer not to be influenced by external ideas - After 1968 the perspective is reserved and the film is considered 22 The vampire here is a woman, a variation of the classical vampires. She’s an old lady who can become young again for a few hours. The movie is not set In Italy but in Paris. In order to avoid the censorship, the vampire is punished in the end. The movie didn’t success at box office until 1969, because in 1958 a new Dracula was released, by Peter Cushing. The movie convinced Italian critics that it was right to go in this direction. From 1969 to 1979 Italian industry really went through this horror and vampire wave, until the spaghetti western took place. The bite of the vampire in these movies are not kisses, are sex metaphors. - Vampires sex is only for pleasure, not for love pr reproduction - Vampires unlock heterosexual desires outside of marriage - Vampire movies depict sexual fantasies of control - Vampire unlock homosexual desires 6 novembre 2023 The multiple Body: mythological heroes and strong men, from Maciste to Maciste (and Hercules) - Boléro vs Cleopatra - In our traditions epic movies are carefully planned. Cabiria is the most famous epic movie, showing the character of Maciste. - Cabiria, 1914 - This is the first time the Italian strong man is presented, it became a sort of paradigm. The movie was called Maciste at the beginning. 25 Maciste became a model for the future. Maciste was not the first and the only strong men of the tradition, there was also Sansone for example, or Ursus. - Quo vadis?, 1913 - 7 novembre 2023 Guest: prof Giuliana Muscio War films: a peculiar film genre The iconography is one of the most important things, it explains a lot of things. The element of conflict is a very important way of understanding how the film is addressing the social aspect. These conflicts are very important for understanding the deep meaning of the narratives. One example of conflict can be the garden and the desert. Garden means civilisation, order; desert means uncivilisation, caos. It’s important to realise when things are different. The rhythm, the music, we can recognise what genre it is just noticing these elements. Genres are, in popular culture, a way of addressing the conflict of the individual with the society. It’s very interesting to see how many negative characters we have now. Now fantasy and horror are mostly together. We always have to understand which genre is prevailing. More mature audience seem to prefer light comic, light drama. We said that genres have to do with specific plot, iconography space and geography. The main change between spaghetti and Hollywood western is the geography, for example. The history behind the story is also very important. Why biopics are made? Because that personality is important in the time is decided to make it. Genres use the cinematic code also, such as editing, lighting etc. 26 As some personality have changed literature, cinema personalities have too. We have innovators like John Ford with the westerns. There are some genres that are specific in time, they develop in a specific moment. War films did start with the Civil war in America, for example (Birth of a Nation by Griffith), but it became more popular with World War II. War films are very expensive to make. A war film is usually representative of a national policy. Many filmmakers went to work for the government to make propaganda movies. - Why we fight: Prelude to war, Frank Capra - The representation of democracy makes a pre-constituted plot for a lot of war films. Characters who die are usually not the protagonists, but usually is someone we sympathise with. German usually are represented like in World War I, very cruel, detached. - Apocalypse Now, Coppola - The opening song is by The Doors. 27