Descriptive and Functional approaches to Genre

  

WORKSHEET:  GENRE BY DESCRIPTION

1. Let’s review what we know already about how

2. Watch these five minute clips of mostly well-known and highly regarded examples from different genre.

1.      The big Sleep

2.      The Godfather

3.      The shining

4.      The magnificent seven

5.      Paths of glory

6.      Metropolis (fritz lang)

3. While we are watching you should decide what genre(s) you think the film belongs to and why.

7.      Police, crime. Film noir

8.      Gangster

9.      Horror, suspence created by music and noise. Point of view shots

10.  Western. Crime

11.  World war I. War. Black and white.

4. Describe the film in terms of i) theme, ii) mood and iii) setting iv) any other elements that make it fit the genre you think it belongs to. Can you think of other films that fit this genre description?
5.  

6. Now make a table in your notes with each of the 7 genres along the top (leave a space for one EXTRA CATEGORY) -- and 5 columns for each of these categories:  i) theme, ii) mood and iii) setting iv) other elements v) examples of the genre.

7. We will now try to compile a general list of what elements need to be included in a film for it to fit into a particular genre.

8. DISCUSSION POINT:  What are the problems you have found when you start to group films by using this descriptive approach – what are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? Does this list take account of the auteur interpretation of film or film-makers such as Hitchcock? Write some notes here to explain your position.

The negatives are that if a movie is categorized in one genre and maybe you normally don’t like the genre but you would like the movie you wouldn’t go to see it. Also many movies can be categorized in more than one genre, and some films are hard to categorize as the boundaries between film genres are fuzzy. Sometimes the function of a film can be read in many different ways depending on the persons point of view, and also there is a problem with who should be the one incharge of giving the genre to a film, it could be the director, the movie goers, film critics, etc. The positives are that it satisfies our expectations as we know what we are going to see so we don’t get disappointed, also it makes it easier for people to choose the movie they want to see depending on what genres they like.

9. We’ll now finish watching Hitchcock’s Psycho. As we watch – make notes on theme, mood and setting in the last column of your table. We will end the lesson by thinking about where this film fits in as a genre(s).

	Film Noir	Gangster	Horror	Western	War	Science fiction	Monster
Themes	Mystery, investigation, crime, isolation in the city	Mob, organized crime, violence, family values	Supernatural, terror, evil, chaos, redemption, suffering	Crime, injustice, revenge, power,	War, death, fights, world without rules.	Vision of the future, conflict, adventure, discovering the unknown	Terror, science fiction, man vs. monster, violence
Mood	Worried	Happy, huge contrast	Suspense, tension	Action, adventure, music, suspense	Obedience, violent, patriotism	Sad, loneliness	Suspense, fear, action
Setting	Urban, naturalistic, black and white, driving scenes	House, parties, rich houses, social events, poor houses, urban and rural	Isolation, haunted house, brave yard	Old west, cowboys	Battle field, trenches, outside, dirty, broken	Future, huge base, outer space, space ships	City
Other			Music, different shots			Prototype of robots	Lots of music, formalist
Examples	The big sleep (dir. Howard Hawkes) 1946	The Godfather (dir. Francis Ford Coppola) 1972	The shining (dir. Francis Stanley Kubrick) 1980	Magnificent seven (dir. John Struges) 1960	Paths of Glory (dir. Stanley Kubrick) 1957	Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang) 1927	King Kong (dir. Merian cooper and earnest schoedsack) 1933