Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System

Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System PDF Author: Thomas Schatz
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The central thesis of this book is that a genre approach provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing and appreciating the Hollywood cinema. Taking into account not only the formal and aesthetic aspects of feature filmmaking, but various other cultural aspects as well, the genre approach treats movie production as a dynamic process of exchange between the film industry and its audience. This process, embodied by the Hollywood studio system, has been sustained primarily through genres, those popular narrative formulas like the Western, musical and gangster film, which have dominated the screen arts throughout this century.

Genre and Hollywood

Genre and Hollywood PDF Author: Steve Neale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134973454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Genre and Hollywood provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of genre. In this important new book, Steve Neale discusses all the major concepts, theories and accounts of Hollywood and genre, as well as the key genres which theorists have written about, from horror to the Western. He also puts forward new arguments about the importance of genre in understanding Hollywood cinema. Neale takes issue with much genre criticism and genre theory, which has provided only a partial and misleading account of Hollywood's output. He calls for broader and more flexible conceptions of genre and genres, for more attention to be paid to the discourses and practices of Hollywood itself, for the nature and range of Hollywood's films to be looked at in more detail, and for any assessment of the social and cultural significance of Hollywood's genres to take account of industrial factors. In detailed, revisionist accounts of two major genres - film noir and melodrama - Neale argues that genre remains an important and productive means of thinking about both New and old Hollywood, its history, its audiences and its films.

Hollywood Genres and Postwar America

Hollywood Genres and Postwar America PDF Author: Mike Chopra-Gant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857713280
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
This is a clear and engrossing account of how popular films in America just after the close of the Second World War played out America's mood at that crucial time. It is also a revisionist challenge to received scholarly understanding of this mood, which has tended to be seen as characterized by an abiding pessimism most clearly manifested in the films noir of the period. Chopra-Gant makes here an important contribution to film genre, which proposes that the 'noir and Zeitgeist' reading is based on the retrospective promotion of selected movies. He turns to the top box office successes of the period, including "Best Years of our Lives", "The Jolson Story" and "Two Years Before the Mast", finding that these films emphasise rather the triumph of American beliefs in democracy, classlessness and individualism. They deploy positive, performative masculinities and the pleasures of male friendships and celebrate the traditional American family, while recognising the problems of 'momism' and absent fathers.

Film Genre

Film Genre PDF Author: Barry Langford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
This book provides a detailed account of genre history and contemporary trends in film genre, alongside the critical debates they have provoked.

Hollywood Genres

Hollywood Genres PDF Author: Thomas Schatz
Publisher: Philadelphia : Temple University Press
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
Schatz analyzes the studio system and tells what film genres mean in a general and theoretical way. Describing some important movie genres in Hollywood's "Golden Era", -- the Western, the gangster film, detective movies, screwball comedies, the musical and the family melodrama -- he surveys selected films and the work of directors associated with them.

Exploring Movie Construction and Production

Exploring Movie Construction and Production PDF Author: John Reich
Publisher: Open SUNY Textbooks
ISBN: 9781942341475
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Exploring Movie Construction & Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme. This approach to film instruction and analysis has proved beneficial to increasing students¿ learning, while enhancing the creativity and critical thinking of the student.

Refiguring American Film Genres

Refiguring American Film Genres PDF Author: Nick Browne
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520207318
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
This collection of essays by leading American film scholars charts a whole new territory in genre film criticism. Rather than assuming that genres are self-evident categories, the contributors offer innovative ways to think about types of films, and patterns within films, in a historical context. Challenging familiar attitudes, the essays offer new conceptual frameworks and a fresh look at how popular culture functions in American society. The range of essays is exceptional, from David J. Russell's insights into the horror genre to Carol J. Clover's provocative take on "trial films" to Leo Braudy's argument for the subject of nature as a genre. Also included are essays on melodrama, race, film noir, and the industrial context of genre production. The contributors confront the poststructuralist critique of genre head-on; together they are certain to shape future debates concerning the viability and vitality of genre in studying American cinema.

Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema

Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema PDF Author: Andrea Virginás
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793613443
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema: History, Theory, and Reception discusses how the Hungarian and Romanian film industries show signs of becoming a regional hub within the Eastern European canon, a process occasionally facilitated by the cultural overlap through the historical province of Transylvania. Andrea Virginás employs a film historical overview to merge the study of small national cinemas with film genre theory and cultural theory and posits that Hollywood-originated classical film genres have been important fields of reference for the development of these Eastern European cinemas. Furthermore, Virginás argues that Hungarian and Romanian genre films demonstrate a valid evolution within the given genre’s standards, and thus need to be incorporated into the global discourse on this subject. Scholars of film studies, Eastern European studies, cultural studies, and history will find this book particularly useful.

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond PDF Author: Lin Feng
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303055077X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination.

Film Genre

Film Genre PDF Author: Barry Keith Grant
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231850069
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
This is a concise evaluation of film genre, discussing genre theory and sample analyses of the western, science fiction, the musical, horror, comedy, and the thriller. It introduces the topic in an accessible way and includes sections on the principles of studying and understanding "the idea of genre"; genre and popular culture; the narrative and stylistic conventions of specific genres; the relations of genres to culture and history, race, gender, sexuality, class and national identity; and the complex relations between genre and authorship. Case studies include: 42nd Street, Pennies from Heaven, Red River, All That Heaven Allows, Night of the Living Dead, Die Hard, Little Big Man, Blue Steel, and Posse.