2nd year, American Studies (MA)

Lect. dr. Veronica Popescu

Genres in American Cinema

Main objectives:

To contribute to the puzzle-like overview of American culture

and civilization offered by this MA program with a presentation
of a culture area through which American imagination, artistry,
ideology, way of life and culture have been popularized
throughout the world from the early decades of the 20th century;
To offer a diachronic perspective on American cinema as an
innovative and conservative industry and art, incorporating the
artist/film/audience/culture complex relationship in a system of
film production and marketing born in the first decades of the
20th century;
To provide an overview of the major genres in American cinema,
in close connection with the development of Hollywood as a
center of international commercial cinema and the socio-
economic, historic and political developments in the United
States;
To create awareness of the problematic nature of the term
“genre” in film studies and provide examples of some of the
canonical movies associated with one genre or another (or
crossing genre limits, for that matter) in American cinema to
date;
Highlighting the role and impact that the “movies” continue to
have in American society (reinforcing or changing mentalities,
social practices, fashion, encouraging consumerism or raising
awareness of the dangers of the modern world)

Topics
1. The birth of cinema as art and industry: the first decades of
experimentation with the camera and narrative construction; the
first narrative films: rewriting national history – the early
epic/historical films
Screening: Edwin S. Porter - The Great Train Robbery (1903);
D.W. Griffith and the birth of the American auteur - The Birth of a
Nation (1915). Recommended viewing: The Artist (2011), dir.
Michel Hazanavicius.1

1
Films proposed for screening are subject to change, depending on students’ viewing experience and
suggestions. Most of those selected are considered representative and/or landmarks in the history of
American cinema and in the history of a particular genre.
 2. Early comedy – types and major comedians (Buster Keaton,
Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx brothers ); the
appearance of the talkies and the beginning of a new era
3. Melodrama, comedy and social criticism: Charlie Chaplin as an
auteur.
Screening: Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times (1936)
Melodrama in the classical Hollywood era
Screening Michal Curtiz - Casablanca (1942)
Presentations: Jean-Loup Bourget - "Social Implications in the Hollywood
Genres" (melodrama and musical as examples); Steve Neale - "Questions of Genre"
4. The Studio Era (1930-48): screball comedy (romantic comedy
with a twist) and social criticism.
Screening: Howard Hawks – Bringing Up Baby
(1938)/Frank Capra – It Happened One Night (1934)
Presentation: David R. Shumway - "Screwball Comedies: Constructing
Romance, Mystifying Marriage"
5. The Studio Era (1930-48)- the system: major studios and studio
specialization; great directors; the crystallization of formulaic
traits for the major film genres. Hollywood’s solutions for
coping with the Great Depression, WWI and WWII. The musical:
early quest for a formula; the Freed musicals of the 1950s and
1960s; further developments of the genre
Screening: early musicals of the 1930s; Stanley Donan,
Gene Kelly – Singing in the Rain (1952); Robert Wise – West
Side Story (1961); Tim Burton – Sweeney Todd. The Demon
Barber of Fleet Street (2007).
Presentations: Rick Altman - "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre"
(mostly about the theory of film genre, with examples from the western and the
musical)
6. The Western as an expression of the American spirit; the
questioning of a national myth: reformulations of the western
formula in the post-war period; spaghetti westerns; the fair
representation of the Indian Other
Screening: John Ford Stagecoach (1939) and The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Kevin Kostner – Dances
with Wolves (1990)
Presentation: Edward Buscombe - "The Idea of Genre in the American
Cinema" (mostly about the western)
7. The crime/gangster movie: early days and subsequent
reinvention of the genre
Screening: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson – Scarface
(1932); Arthur Penn - Bonnie and Clyde (1967); Francis Ford
Coppola – The Godfather (1972)
8. The horror film – from Dracula to mutants
 Screening: Tod Browning - Dracula (1931); Alfred Hitchcock
- Psycho (1960); Francis Ford Coppola – Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein (1994)/ Ridley Scott – Alien (1979)
Presentations: Margaret Tarrat - "Monsters from the Id" (Sci-Fi); Bruce F.
Kawin - "Children of the Light" (horror film)
9. A new era in American cinema (1946-67*): film noir: from John
Huston’s – The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Robert Aldrich’s Kiss
Me Deadly (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958); the
psychological depth of late Alfred Hitchcock’s films;
Screening: fragments from the films above and Billy Wilder’s
Double Indemnity (1944)
Presentation: Paul Schrader - "Notes on Film Noir" (film noir)
10. The war and the anti-war movie: film as propaganda or protest
Screening: Howard Hawks - Sergeant York (1941); Francis
Ford Coppola –Apocalypse Now (1979); Kathryn Bigelow - The
Hurt Locker (2009)
Presentation: Thomas Sobchack - "Genre Film: A classical Experience" (main
features of the genre film and other theoretical issues: example: war movie)
11. -12. The McCarthy era and its effects on the Hollywood industry.
The Hollywood Renaissance (1967-1976*): European cinema and
its influence on Hollywood : auteur-ism, the influence of Italian
Neo-Realism and the French New Wave; major American auteurs
and the reinvention of the genre film (focus on Martin Scorsese
and Stanley Kubrick); other important directors; filmmakers’
concern with politics and social issues – creating social and
poitical awareness as a new function of cinema; the intellectual
comedies of Woody Allen
Screening: Stanley Kubrick – 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968); Martin Scorsese – Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull
(1980); Woody Allen – Annie Hall (1977)/ Manhattan (1979)
13. - 14. The New American Cinema (1977- ) – genre film returs
with a vengeance: the popularity of action and adventure
movies; new screen heroes; the conquest of the West is now a
conquest of space: the rise of science fiction as a new myth-
making genre (the Star Wars series); the dawning of a new era
in filmmaking: developments in film technology and the
sovereignty of the computer in special effects; 3D cinema;
political correctness and atonement in Hollywood productions;
new approaches to racism and discrimination; new interesting
directors
Screening: fragments from George Lucas – Star Wars:
Episode IV, A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars: Episode III,
Revenge of the Sith (2005); Peter Jackson – The Lord of the
Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)/; Ang Lee – Life of
Pi (2012); Paul Haggis – Crash (2004)/Steve McQueen – 12
 Years a Slave/ Tate Taylor – The Help (2011); Quentin
Tarantino – Pulp Fiction (1994)/ Django Unchained (2013)

Evaluation: 1. In-class participation (frequency and quality).

Nota bene: This class presupposes constant attendance. If, for
whatever reasons, you cannot attend most of the classes, please
contact me at the beginning of the semester.
2. One in-class presentation (may also count as final
exam when class participation is also constant). Topic:
Presentation of one of the films suggested for screening. Parts of
the presentation: a) general information on the film, including
director, writer, cast, cinematographer; b) brief summary; c)
generic features that make it a classic of the genre or strategies
for subverting the formula of the genre it (mis-)represents; d)
interpretation of one or two key scenes (to be screened in class)
3. Sit-in exam, predominantly practical in nature, aimed at
allowing students to demonstrate their understanding and
correct identification of generic features after screening a movie
scene. This will be taken by those with little or no class
participation and no in-class presentation. For a top grade,
students are required to also demonstrate their ability to
connect studio policies and marketing strategies with the social,
political and economic context of the time.

Useful websites

Internet Movie Database (IMDb) http://us.imdb.com/

Tim Dirk’s filmsite http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html
Rotten Tomatoes http://www.rottentomatoes.com/
David Bordwell’s website on cinema
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
Selective Bibliography

Boggs, Joseph A. – The Art of Watching Films. Sixth Edition.

Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company. 1996.
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, Kristin Thompson – The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to
1960. Routledge. 1988.
Chatman, Seymour – Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in
Fiction and Film. Cornell University Press. 1978.
Gaines, Jane (ed.) – Classsical Hollywood Narrative: The
Paradigm Wars. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1992.
Gehring, Wes D. (ed.) - Handbook of American Film Genres. New
York: Greenwod Press. 1988.
Gledhill, Christine (ed.) – Stardom. Industry of Desire. London:
Routledge. 1991.
Grant, Barry Keith (ed.) – The Film Genre Reader. Austin: University
of Texas Press. 1986.
----- - Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower
Press. 2007.
Grodal, Torben Kroch – Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film
Genres, Feelings and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 1997.
Hill, John, Pamela Church Gibson (eds.) – American Cinema and
Hollywood. Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 2000.
Hollows, Joanne – Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the
Movies. New York: Routlege. 1996.
Jenkins, Henry, Kristine Brunovska Karnick (eds.) – Classical
Hollywood Comedy. New York: Routledge. 1994.
Kolker, Robert – A Cinema of Loneliness. Third Edition. Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press. 2000 (1980).
Lenihan, John H. – Showdown. Confronting Modern America in
the Western Film. Urbana/ Chicago: University of Illinois
Press. 1985.
Maltley, Richard – Hollywood Cinema. Second Edition. Blackwell.
2003 (1995)
Mast, Gerald, Kevin Bruce (eds.) – A Short History of the Movies.
Sixth Edition. Needham Heights, MA: Allen & Bacon. 1996
(1971).
Moine, Raphaëlle – Cinema Genre. Malden, MA/ Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing. 2008.
Neale, Steve – Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge. 2000.
Solomon, Stanley J. – Beyond Formula: American Film Genres.
New York: Harcourt Brace. 1976.