✲ Many of the auteur critics associated with Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s (Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer and
Rivette) started to make their own auteur films in the 1960s; they abandoned the script in favour of improvisation and spontaneity.
✲ The auteur policy was developed in Britain in the magazine Movie and in North America by Andrew Sarris.
✲ Hitchcock is identified by all auteur critics as an undisputed auteur because of his consistency in style and themes.
✲ Hitchcock’s style consists of: 1) an emphasis on editing and montage; 2) a high number of point-of-view shots; 3) filming in confined spaces, which provided Hitchcock with challenges on how to construct scenes.
✲ Hitchcock’s themes include: 1) a narrative involving an investigation (usually of a murder), in which the film’s protagonist is either the investigator or the one who is investigated; 2) confession and guilt; 3) suspense; 4) the perfect murder; 5) the wrong man.
✲ Wenders is an auteur of the New German Cinema.
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✲ The main themes in Wenders’s films include: 1) the influence of North American culture; 2) road movies; 3) male bonding; 4) the impossibility of male–female relationships.
✲ The main stylistic elements in Wenders’s films include: 1) an emphasis on the image, rather than narrative; 2) an emphasis on dead time.
✲ Bigelow’s style consists of: 1) a strong, distinctive visual style based on moody lighting; 2) visceral textures; and 3) an editing pace that is either slow of hyperkinetic. Bigelow’s consistent themes include: 1) rebellious male characters; 2) strong androgynous female characters; 3) a counter-cultural lifestyle; and 4) graphic violence.
3 Film authorship: the director as auteur 117
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4
Film genres:
defining the
typical film
Inthischapteryouwilllearnabout:
33 the differences between auteur and genre
studies of film
33 two approaches to the study of genre films:
the descriptive approach and the functional
approach, plus the strengths and weaknesses
of each
33 new studies of melodrama films (‘the fallen
woman film’, the ‘melodrama of the unknown
woman’ and the ‘paranoid woman’s film’)
33 classical and new (or ‘neo’) filmsnoirs,
including an overview of the career of neo-film noir director John Dahl
33 1950s science fiction films such as Invasion oftheBodySnatchers , and their ambiguous
political meanings.
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Genre movies have comprised the bulk of film practice, the iceberg of film history beneath the visible tip that in the past has commonly been understood as film art.
Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader, p. xi
What the film critic, who sits blindly through films week after week, could be expected to do is to contribute to an aesthetic of the typical film.
Lawrence Alloway, ‘The Iconography of the Movies’, p. 4
The genre film is the mass-produced product of the Hollywood film industry. Whereas the auteur approach to Hollywood cinema, discussed in the previous chapter, privileges invention and personal creation, the study of genre privileges convention and collective meaning.
Spotlight
Auteurism emphasizes the uniqueness of a film, whereas genre study emphasizes the similarities that exist between a group of films. Genre study privileges a film’s conformity to a pre-existing set of conventions.
More accurately, auteurism identifies the common attributes that make an individual director’s films unique, whereas genre study identifies the common attributes that define a particular group of films. Auteurism groups together a small body of films according to their specific stylistic attributes, which are equated with the director’s authorial signature. Genre study groups together a large body of films according to the common attributes that make that film a typical example of its type.
The contrast between auteurism and genre study can be spelled out in the following terms:
3
3
Genre study privileges what is general, standard, ordinary, typical, familiar, conventional, average and accepted in a group of films.
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33 Auteurism privileges what is specific, unique, unusual, inventive, exceptional and challenging in a group of films.
The same film, of course, can be analysed from the perspective of genre study or auteurism. Each perspective will simply privilege different aspects of the film. For example, Blonde Venus (1932) has been studied both as a genre film – a melodrama – and as an auteurist film – a film by the well-known auteurist Josef von Sternberg, containing the typical attributes of his mise-en-scène, such as shallow depth, created by lace or netting occupying the foreground and covering the entire image, which obscures the story and characters in favour of reducing story space to an abstraction, emphasizing pattern, texture and rhythm (indeed, Sternberg downplayed story and character to such an extent that he wanted his films to be projected upside down!). Below I shall discuss Blonde Venus as a melodrama.
There are two main approaches to genre: a descriptive approach and a functional approach. A descriptive approach divides up the Hollywood cake into genre slices and defines each genre according to its properties, or common attributes. But it is not sufficient merely to describe the common attributes of each genre. This descriptive approach needs to be supplemented by an approach that defines the function of genre films. Below we shall see how the notion of genre enables us to determine the relation between a film and the society in which it is produced and consumed. This involves defining the genre film as a cultural myth. In the second part of this chapter we shall see how genre critics have attempted to describe and define the function of three film genres: the melodrama, the film noir and the 1950s science fiction film.
Problems in the study of genres
The word ‘genre’ means ‘type’ or ‘category’. To study a film as a genre involves treating it, not as a unique entity, but as a member of a general category, as a certain type of film. In the descriptive approach, a film is subsumed under a particular genre category if it possesses the necessary properties or attributes of that genre. The aim of the descriptive approach to genre is therefore to classify, or organize, a large number of films into a small number of groups. Yet, in film studies at least, 4 Film genres: defining the typical film 121
this process of classification does not systematically organize films into genres. This is because the boundaries between film genres are fuzzy, rather than clearly delineated. Moreover, genres are not static, but evolve. Therefore, their common attributes change over time. Many films are hybrid genres, since they possess the common attributes of more than one genre. A typical example is the singing cowboy film, which possesses the attributes of both the musical and the Western.
Spotlight
In an interview, David Lynch (director of Lost Highway) says, ‘I don’t like pictures that are one genre only, so [ Lost Highway] is a combination of things. It’s a kind of horror film, a kind of a thriller, but basically it’s a mystery. That’s what it is. A mystery’ (Lynch, David and Gifford, Barry, Lost Highway, 1997, p. xiii).
Further problems arise in the descriptive approach. For
example, how do we define genres? Do we rely on categories identified by the film industry, or categories defined by film critics? And how do we identify the common attributes
of genres? If we start by grouping films together and then identifying their common attributes, we must ask ourselves,
‘Why did we group these particular films together?’ If you answer that it is because of their common attributes, then you have pre-empted the descriptive aim of genre study, which is precisely to identify those common attributes.
The descriptive approach to gen
re is therefore fraught with difficulties. At the end of this chapter we shall see that the functional approach also raises difficulties. But despite these difficulties, I shall still endeavour to see what results both the descriptive and functional approaches to film genre have so far achieved.
Genre film as myth
Genre films create expectations that condition our responses.
The familiarity of the genre film enables each spectator to anticipate and predict what will appear in them. The genre film sets up hopes and promises and brings pleasure if these hopes 122
and promises are fulfilled. In studying genre films, we first need to isolate the patterns and themes that appear repeatedly in them. For genre critics, these recurring patterns are not merely formal patterns; instead, they reflect the basic questions, problems, anxieties, difficulties, worries and, more generally, the values of a society and the ways members of that society attempt to tackle those basic questions and problems. A genre film is satisfying, then, if it addresses those questions and problems that spectators expect it to address. The genre film is a form of collective expression, a mirror held up to society that embodies and reflects the shared problems and values of that society.
The genre film also offers solutions to those problems, and reinforces social values. Of course, a genre film cannot offer real solutions to real questions and problems; its solutions are imaginary and idealistic. But this may explain one of the attractions of the cinema, and the genre film in particular: it offers imaginary answers to real problems, although during the film, these answers seem to be more than mere fantasy. It is only upon leaving the movie theatre, as we try to get home, or after we switch off the television, that the real problems begin to emerge again.
From this discussion of the function of genre films, we can argue that watching them is a form of cultural ritual. To study genre films is one way of studying the culture that produces and consumes them. Barry Keith Grant argues that:
Surely one of our basic ways of understanding film genres, and of explaining their evolution and changing fortunes of popularity and production, is as collective expressions of contemporary life that strike a particularly resonant chord with audiences. It is virtually a given in genre criticism that, for example, the ’30s musicals are on one level ‘explained’ as an escapist Depression fantasy; that film noir in the ’40s expressed first the social and sexual dislocations brought about by World War II and then the disillusionment when it ended; and that the innumerable science fiction films of the ’50s embodied cold war tensions and nuclear anxiety new to that decade.
‘Experience and Meaning in Genre Films’, Film Genre Reader, pp. 116–17
4 Film genres: defining the typical film 123
The genre film offers a lesson in how to act within society and how to deal with current problems and anxieties. But it does not offer neutral ways of dealing with social problems. Instead, it prescribes a preferred set of values, those of capitalist ideology, with its emphasis on the individual: the individual’s right of ownership, private enterprise and personal wealth, the nuclear family with the wife staying at home and the husband working, the necessity of conforming to moral and social laws and so on.
New studies of melodrama
In the following pages we shall review the common attributes of film melodrama and then look at recent studies that have divided up the genre of melodrama into thinner slices. The genre of melodrama has been exhaustively studied; see, for example, the books by Barbara Klinger, Christine Gledhill and Jackie Byars (Dig deeper). Rather than attempt to summarize this enormous body of work and repeat its conclusions, it is more beneficial to concentrate on narrowly focused studies. But first, a few general remarks.
Historically, melodrama has replaced religion as a way of thinking through moral issues and conflicts. As with religion, the function of melodrama is to clarify ethical choices that we have to make in our lives. This is why the conflict between good and evil is central to melodrama. But rather than focusing on the sacred, as religion does, melodrama focuses on moral issues and conflicts as experienced by ordinary people on a personal, everyday basis.
The genre of the film melodrama is frequently defined as a woman’s genre, because it represents the questions, problems, anxieties, difficulties and worries of women living in a male-dominated, or patriarchal, society. The first and most prevalent property, or common attribute, of melodrama is that it is dominated by an active female character. Below I have attempted to list the melodrama’s primary attributes.
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33 A woman often dominates the narrative of the melodrama.
33 Melodrama narrates the perspective of the victim; in
conjunction with the above attribute, melodrama can be said to turn its female character into a victim.
33 Melodrama makes moral conflict its main theme or subject matter, particularly the moral conflicts experienced by
women within a patriarchal society.
33 Melodrama is usually based on an omniscient form of
narration. Chapter 2 illustrates omniscient narration by means of Douglas Sirk’s melodrama Magnificent Obsession.
33 The plot of melodrama consists of unexpected twists and sharp reversals in the storyline.
33 The plot of melodrama also consists of chance events and encounters.
33 Secrets dominate the melodrama plot.
33 Finally, the melodrama contains dramatic knots, which complicate the plot and create the moral conflicts.
Almost all melodramas contain some or all of these attributes, although not all are dominated by women. A number of Sirk’s films (such as Written on the Wind, 1956, and Tarnished Angels, 1957) are called male melodramas because their narratives are dominated by men, who are set up as victims, and who experience moral conflicts because they cannot live up to the roles carved out for them by a patriarchal society.
We shall now look at the more narrowly focused studies of melodrama. We shall first consider what Lea Jacobs calls the
‘fallen woman’ film and then analyse Blonde Venus (von Sternberg, 1932) as a fallen woman film. I shall then discuss what Stanley Cavell, the philosopher, calls the ‘melodrama of the unknown woman’ and then analyse Only Yesterday (John Stahl, 1933) as a melodrama of the unknown woman. Finally, I shall examine what Mary Ann Doane calls the ‘paranoid
woman’s film’ and briefly discuss several films that belong to this subgenre.
4 Film genres: defining the typical film 125
thefallenWomanfIlm
Although the term ‘fallen woman film’ has been used for some time, it has now been immortalized in a book by Jacobs called The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928–1942 (1991). A representative sample of fallen woman films includes Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown, 1935), Ann Vickers (John Cromwell, 1933), Baby Face (Alfred Green, 1933), Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939), Back Street (Robert Stevenson, 1941), Blonde Venus (Sternberg, 1932), Camille (George Cukor, 1936) and Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon, 1937).
Jacobs defines this group of films in the following way: These films concern a woman who commits a sexual
transgression such as adultery or premarital sex. In traditional versions of the plot, she is expelled from the domestic space of the family and undergoes a protracted decline.
The Wages of Sin, p. x
Because of the transgressive nature of their subject matter, these films were strongly censored. Jacobs attempts to demonstrate how censorship shaped and defined the fallen woman’s film, or, more specifically, how censorship imposed certain narrative conventions on studios which made fallen woman films. The influence of censorship can therefore be found in the way it affected a film’s cause–effect logic.
As we saw in Chapter 2, classical narrative films are governed by a cause–effect logic, which means that one action or event is perceived by the spectator to be caused by another action or event. These actions and events are normally carried out by a single character, or small group of c
haracters, who thereby initiate, motivate and link together in a cause–effect logic the film’s actions and events across the entire film. However, some actions and events were deemed offensive by film censors.
In the early 1930s, due to public pressure (notably by the Legion of Decency, which had 11 million members, and which recommended to all its members that they boycott offensive films), the Hollywood film industry established a form of 126
self-regulated censorship, in which all film scripts had to be sent to the Studio Relations Committee before shooting began.
The film studios then attempted to incorporate the censors’
suggestions into the script before shooting, so scripts were primarily censored in Hollywood, not final films. The censors’
recommendations usually meant that the film’s cause–effect logic had to be distorted, for censorship did not so much affect what was to be depicted in films, but how it was to be depicted.
Jacobs points out that, at the level of the whole film,
censorship clearly sought to encourage unambiguous forms of representation (that is, films with a unified moral message). But at the level of the shot and the scene, censors recommended that film-makers represent potentially offensive events in an indirect way. Such a strategy resulted in ambiguous forms of representation.
Jacobs analyses in detail how censorship affected Blonde Venus.
Before reviewing Jacobs’s analysis, I shall sum up the film’s plot.
The film centres on a former cabaret performer Helen Faraday (Marlene Dietrich), her chemist husband Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) and their son Johnny. Ned develops chemical
poisoning which can be cured only in Europe. In order to pay for his journey and his treatment, Helen returns to the stage.
Film Studies- An Introduction Page 15