Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond

Front Cover
Edinburgh University Press, 2005 - Performing Arts - 310 pages
Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond provides a detailed account of genre history and contemporary trends in film genre, alongside the critical debates they have provoked. The book ranges widely across the field, dealing separately and in detail with not only classic genres - including the Western, the musical, the war film, the gangster film, and film noir - but also more recent trends such as body-horror, Holocaust film, and the action blockbuster. Throughout the book, genre is presented as a constantly evolving phenomenon. Writing in a sophisticated yet accessible style, Barry Langford shows how notions of genre help shape the ways that filmmakers, critics and audiences view films and how the often complex scholarly debates around genre reflect important differences in the ways cinema is understood in relation to its social and historical contexts. The book encourages students to interrogate and broaden received ideas about genre.Key Features*Key text suitable for both undergraduate and advanced students*Detailed close analyses of key films (including The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan and Singin' in the Rain)*Comprehensive bibliography and guide to further reading*Up-to-date and theoretically informed

References to this book

About the author (2005)

Barry Langford is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2005) and Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film (with Robert Eaglestone, Palgrave Macmillan 2007), and has published on a wide variety of subjects in film and media studies and critical theory, including Holocaust film, Chris Marker's politics, revisionist Westerns, exilic identity in European city films, narrative temporalities in The Lord of the Rings, and British television situation comedy. His original short screenplay Torte Bluma was filmed in 2005 and premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival, going on to win awards at international festivals.

Bibliographic information