Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Exploring genre in film
Movie genre analysis essay
Analysis of movie genres
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
From the beginning of cinema as an art form to cinema today, film has evolved and developed drastically. Each era of film from the Silent Film to the French New Wave was influenced by prior film generations and influenced those films that came after it. The era of Silent Film was very basic as it emerged when motion pictures had only begun. Across the sea, the age of German Expressionism, a film genre with features of the Silent Film era which conveyed the German people's struggle after World War I had started. Afterwards, the Studio Era surfaced and portrayed larger than life heroes in narratives with the gloss of a storybook. During the Studio Era, films like these were produced quickly because of success and began to appear mass produced
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
The silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
Revolutionary forms of art have dominated much of Germany, apparently as a reaction to the First World War. The era in which the First World War took place – throughout the 1910s, featured artists coming together against what they think the pointless aggression said major conflict brought. German artists, in particular, protested against the social structures prevalent during the 1910s, within which the social structures of the Second Reich were prevalent. German society initially saw film, in particular, as quite an inelegant alternative to the bourgeoisie-associated theater. Such is due to the inability of the domestic film industry in Germany to develop films due to two reasons – the mass importation of foreign films from other nations with more advanced film industries and the consequent notion that films are associated with the lower classes (Kellner 3-39). Such impressions, however, changed with the rise of German expressionist film, with the seminal example being The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari by Robert Wiene.
On January 31st, 1950. President Harry S. Truman announces his decision for the development of the hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb was theorized to be way more powerful then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Five months earlier, America lost their powerful nuclear supremacy to the Soviet Union, due to the country successfully detonating an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Several weeks later, Britain and the U.S. intelligence came to the conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top ranking scientists in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. With the collection of these events, Truman approved the massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb”.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock is recognised as one of the most pioneering and renowned directors in the history of cinema (Hockensmith A, 2012). His cinematic style that favours the use of suspense over surprise has become iconic and influential in modern film. Hitchcock’s early days as an assistant director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin (German Expressionism, 2007), had a lasting impact on some of his later works produced in Hollywood. During Hitchcock’s time in Germany he became fascinated with German Expressionism. The film style, prevalent in the 1920s, arose from Germany’s post World War I experiences and largely reflects the dismal reality of life during the era and often invokes distorted and abstract images, as opposed to naturalism
Hollywood in the 30’s and 40’s was the golden-age of a new era of filmmaking. The films of that period went beyond the silent films being produced in the past. Diagetic sounds like dialogue and more advanced filmic techniques would push cinema to a new mode of filmmaking, that being classicism. The classical Hollywood structure was being developed in the past with silent films but it came to full fruition in the 30’s, where many filmmakers would produce feature-length films with fully developed storylines and the use of glamorous lighting and larger-than life characterizations to give audiences a more cinematic experience. Genre films like: the gangster, comedy, western, horror, and other various genres of the era, provided large revenue for studios and the creative means for filmmakers to manipulate the mise-en-scene to make each genre films slightly different from the rest. Classicism would provide audiences with clear-cut characterizations, simple storylines, non-intrusive directing, and simple but entertaining conclusions that neatly wrap up the story.
With the loss of its centralized structure, the film industry produced filmmakers with radical new ideas. The unique nature of these films was a product of the loss of unified identity.
century due to the end of censorship and propaganda regimes, some film makers such as
Upon receiving the brief for our Multimedia Studies assignment, Group 11 members arranged at a date for everyone to meet together to discuss the presentation project. We all had an interest in the film aspect of the media sector, so we decided our project would relate to the film industry. Being more specific about our project topic, we chose to base our presentation on film production. With six members, it was necessary to distribute the presentation work evenly, in doing so we allocated each person with a different area that concerns film production. These topics were completed separately and then sent to an allocated member, who compiled the work into a single presentation piece. We then presented our project to our fellow students.
What are the shared characteristics of French New Wave films? A shift away from the past filmmaking financing institution and genre and the use of film to take an individual
The relationship between photography and cinema is that cinema is photography in motion. In the early 1800’s, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre was given credit for the daguerreotype which is the process where an image is attached on a metal plate. Towards the mid 1800’s, Eadweard Muybridge created the zoopraxiscope which was the first motion projector that projected movies from images on a rotating glass. Cinema came in to play right after the first World War. Directors and producers were in competition with foreign film directors through the use of lighting, sets, etc. By the end of the great war, American directors were equal with foreign directors and this is when films began to have a storyline, rather than just images. As listed above, Louis
German Expressionism, despite being short lived (approximately 1910 – 1930) is considered one of the most influential film movements which established Hollywood as the centre of the film industry. One of Hollywood’s most successful directors Tim Burton and British director Terry Gilliam are probably the two film makers who are the most influenced by the movement.
The filmmaking industry of Post-war Germany was virtually non-existent, but was in the process of being rebuilt. Firstly, the Allies dismantled the Nazi propaganda industry. Then, they used films to re-educate Germans. Hollywood jumped at the chance to distribute their films in Germany again. Without import quotas in West Germany, American films could cheaply enter the market, which subdued domestic filmmaking. The few German films that did get made had a typical hero of a “little man,” and portrayed Germans as victims of Nazism rather than as the ones responsible for it. These films weren’t artistic, and had mostly conservative messages, rarely acknowledging the country’s Nazi past. The low point of German cinema came at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival in which no Federal Film Prize was awarded because no film made was worthy of it. The New German Cinema arose under these