The True Genres of Film
Like it or not, cinema has become the dominant language of our era. It is the newest art form, not even one hundred years old, yet it has made an enormous impact on World culture. The film's ability to communicate is the most basic reason why people have created the gigantic motion picture industry. "Films are able to create an immediate presence that can entertain, inform, and educate us all at the same time. " Film medium consists of a wide range of styles and covers an extensive span of topics. Motion pictures are categorized into various film classes beyond the most common, narrative film, such as the documentary, the personal, and the experimental film. These individual film classes are narrowed down even further into "genres-groups of motion pictures that possess similar stylistic, thematic, and structural interests. " The use of genres to categorize film has both, its advantages and disadvantages. The widespread acceptance and categorization of film by genres, suggests that the benefits of using this classification system are substantially higher than the shortcomings sustained through its use. Genre is a very important component of film. "It identifies the general direction of the plot line and makes it possi
Chris Marker's short, narrative film La Jetee made in 1962 marks another cinema milestone of the 20th century. It is a film made almost entirely of black and white photographic still images. Nonetheless, even today, it is considered to be more superior film than any of its imitators. Marker brilliantly used still images combined with sparse, ghostly sounding narration talked to construct a story which is both convincing and unforgettable. La Jetee tells the story of a dreary post World War III future, where Parisians are forced to live underground. A prisoner is chosen to help the present by traveling into the future. He is chosen because of his obsession with an event in his past. As a child he witnessed a shooting at an airport, at that same moment his eyes met those of a beautiful woman. His exceptional ability to "daydream" allows him to travel through time without going crazy. At first, the underground scientists send the man back to the woman he saw as a child. They become friends and lovers. Later, the scientists send the man into the future, in order to get the tools necessary to save mankind. After arguing that they cannot deny there own past, he gets a new source of power and takes it back to the subterranean world. Realizing that he is no longer useful to the scientists, the futuristic people help him to escape to the past. There he meets his love at the airport where he is shot and killed by someone from his own time. As he dies, he sees himself as a child being given the image that will allow him to travel through time. At first glance, La Jetee feels like science-fiction, but the real story of the film is about love. Clearly the main hero if the story is in love with the woman from his past. That is only one type of love that is portrayed in the film. Marker also shows the main hero's love for all the basic things we take for granted, things like the sky, trees, water, velvet, and etc. All the things that do not exist in the grim, underground, inhabited world created after the catastrophe. The only live action scene used in La Jetee is of a woman sleeping. The live-action shot of the woman opening her eyes is the key shot of the film. The dissolving still-shots leading up to the live action shot show the woman with her eyes closed. Immediately followed by the live-action shot of her eyes opening up. This sequence symbolizes the movie coming alive, the hero's memory coming alive; becoming real. What makes La Jetee truly unique is its use of still black and white photographs. It isn't really a movie, it feels more like a slide show of powerful images. Chris Marker was able to tell a story and affect us emotionally using the power of a single image. Film genres are made up of wide-ranging, imprecise categories that are often broken down into smaller, more detailed sub-genres. Sub-genre provide an even better understanding of what the film is really about, before we even view it. For example, the genre of Crime films spans a very large area of film. To narrow it down, Gangster films along side Police films were classified as the two sub-genres of Crime film. Disaster films of the seventies martial arts films are all examples of sub-genres of the Action film. Sub-genre classification plays a significant role in the unimaginative, dull, money driven "sequelmania" (1980s-present day) trend accepted and followed by the American film industry. Sub-genre classification further simplifies the analysis of films. Producers, writers, and directors are analyzing a box office success in order to see what made the movie successful. As soon as the formula for success of the film is identified; producers, writers, and directors immediately release a number of films that closely resemble the original, and stress the newly assumed formula for success. The moment this group of imitation films leaves the movie theatres, a handful more comparable films are released, this time using the slightly revised, m
Some common words found in the essay are:
, Hilary Harris, Robert Breer, La Jetee, Lonedale Operator, War III, Pere Lorentz, Eliot Noyes, Thomson Thomson's, Lincolnwood NTC, robert breer, sam borenstein, la jetee, documentary film, personal film, motion picture, live action, portrait sam borenstein, film classes, joyce borenstein, farm land, father portrait sam, colours father portrait, owl creek bridge, saul elaine bass,
Approximate Word count = 3157
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
