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4 Beyond genre: Le Salaire de la peur Following Rick Altman’s argument (1999: 20) that genre is not merely ‘a hollow commercial formula’ but ‘a culturally functional category’, the main purpose of this discussion is to study Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la peur and ‘the particular ratio it exhibits between convention and invention, between the requirements of genre and the ingenuity and world view of an auteur working with that genre’ (Andrew 1984: 116). Although there may be some initial hesitation about what genre Le Salaire belongs to (for example
in it’. 1 In Michael Winterbottom’s case, either he has never been given that advice or he has ignored it. The diversity of his output raises the issue of genre in British filmmaking in unusually vivid terms. He has made literary adaptations strikingly at odds with the prevailing British mode of dealing with classic authors; there is in some of his work a strong sense of the documentary influence at work, when he has been
Previous studies of screen performance have tended to fix upon star actors, directors, or programme makers, or they have concentrated upon particular training and acting styles. Moving outside of these confines, this book provides an interdisciplinary account of performance in film and television and examines a much neglected area in people's understanding of how popular genres and performance intersect on screen. The advent of star studies certainly challenged the traditional notion of the director as the single or most important creative force in a film. Genre theory emerged as an academic area in the 1960s and 1970s, partly as a reaction to the auteurism of the period and partly as a way of addressing popular cinematic forms. Television studies have also developed catalogues of genres, some specific to the medium and some that refer to familiar cinematic genres. The book describes certain acting patterns in the classic noirs Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past and the neo-noirs Chinatown. British television drama in the 1970s had a special interest in the genre of horror. There is no film genre to which performance is as crucial as it is to the biopic. To explore comedy performance is to acknowledge that there is something that defines a performance as 'comic'. The book also examines drama-documentary, the western, science fiction, comedy performance in 'spoof news' programmes and the television 'sit com' and popular Bollywood films.
A first statement: Les Mistons Truffaut’s attitude to genre and the questions it posed for French film-makers is neatly summed up at a very early point of his career in the juxtapositioning of two short sequences in Les Mistons. Unobtrusive and understated, these sequences nevertheless eloquently express the views of the Nouvelle Vague directors on the subject of the future
that the notion of categorisation remains important, even if some film, television and radio examples resist easy classification. The concept of genre has been one of the most useful ways of categorising and classifying a range of popular culture artefacts and has long provided the film industry - producers and exhibitors - with an effective way to promote its product to audiences. It was also found
1 NATION, GENRE, INSTITUTION What makes these fictions’ involvement in the ‘borderless world’ of the global era most fascinating is their nationality. On a broad level, this relationship often demands attention; as Jonas Frykman notes, ‘The more Europe is integrated and the world is globalised, the quicker the dissolution of sedimented practices, routines and traditions proceeds, then all the more national identity is discussed, given a sharper profile and challenged.’47 As well as existing within the collective group of Europe and Scandinavia, Sweden is also a
A generation ago, Spain was emerging from a nearly forty-year dictatorship. This book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish cinema and genre from 1990 to the present. It brings together European and North American scholars to establish a critical dialogue on the topic of contemporary Spanish cinema and genre while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory. The book addresses a particular production unit, the Barcelona-based Fantastic Factory as part of the increasingly important Filmax group of companies, with the explicit aim of making genre films that would have an appeal beyond the Spanish market. It explores the genrification of the Almodovar brand in the US media and cinematic imaginary as a point of departure to tackle how the concepts of genre, authorship and Spanish cinema itself acquire different meanings when transposed into a foreign film market. Melodrama and political thriller films have been a narrative and representational form tied to the imagining of the nation. The book also examines some of the aspects of Carícies that distinguish it from Pons's other entries in his Minimalist Trilogy. It looks briefly at the ways in which the letter acts as one of the central melodramatic gestures in Isabel Coixet's films. After an analysis of the Spanish musical from the 1990s until today, the book discusses Spanish immigration films and some Spanish-Cuban co-productions on tourism and transnational romance.
Genre, cycles and critical traditions 9 1 Genre, cycles and critical traditions How do we know a romantic comedy when we see one? According to Brian Henderson, ‘definition, even delimitation, is difficult or impossible because all Hollywood films (except some war films) have romance and all have comedy’ (2001: 312). While the pervasive presence of romance and comedy is undeniable, Henderson is conflating different levels of representational convention. All Hollywood genres implicitly belong to the broader traditions of American narrative film (Pye 1975: 31
Comedy was consistently the most popular genre of radio programme. In a 1946 US survey, 59% of respondents listed comedy as their favourite form of programme. 1 This is perhaps not surprising, given the background first of economic depression and later world war. People wanted to be cheered up. But radio imposed certain restrictions on comedy. Visual comedy such as slapstick was impossible. Comedy needed to be predominantly verbal and radio was the home of
As we have argued in the previous chapter, the domain of documentary is problematic either to identify or to define easily. Documentary as a genre, as a concept, is inherently unstable and continuously undergoing transformations. Historically documentary has been quick to adapt to external changes, such as the emergence of television (Corner, 1996 ; Winston, 1996 ; Hughes, 1996 ). More recently