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  3. Genres in American Cinema

Genres in American Cinema examines the significance of American films in a series of single-authored volumes, each dedicated to a different genre from thrillers to science fiction. Each volume provides a comprehensive account of its genre, from enduring classics to contemporary revisions, from marginal appropriations to international inflections, emphasizing both its distinctive qualities as well as its cultural, historical, and critical contexts. The approach is methodologically broad, balancing theoretical and historical discussion with close readings of representative films. The books are intellectually rigorous yet written in a style that is lively and accessible to students and general audiences alike.

  • General Editors: Barry Keith Grant, Brock University, Ontario, Canada

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3 results in Genres in American Cinema

Crime Films
  • Thomas Leitch
  • Published online:
    27 October 2009
    Print publication:
    15 August 2002
  • This book surveys the entire range of crime films, including important subgenres such as the gangster film, the private eye film, film noir, as well as the victim film, the erotic thriller, and the crime comedy. Focusing on ten films that span the range of the twentieth century, Thomas Leitch traces the transformation of the three leading figures that are common to all crime films: the criminal, the victim and the avenger. Analyzing how each of the subgenres establishes oppositions among its ritual antagonists, he shows how the distinctions among them become blurred throughout the course of the century. This blurring, Leitch maintains, reflects and fosters a deep social ambivalence towards crime and criminals, while the criminal, victim and avenger characters effectively map the shifting relations between subgenres, such as the erotic thriller and the police film, within the larger genre of crime film that informs them all.

Science Fiction Film
  • J. P. Telotte
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    06 August 2001
  • Science Fiction Film examines one of the most enduring and popular genres of Hollywood cinema, suggesting how the science fiction film reflects attitudes toward science, technology, and reason as they have evolved in American culture over the course of the twentieth century. J. P. Telotte provides a survey of science fiction film criticism, emphasizing humanist, psychological, ideological, feminist, and postmodern critiques. He also sketches a history of the genre, from its earliest literary manifestations to the present, while touching on and comparing it to pulp fiction, early television science fiction, and Japanese animé. Telotte offers in-depth readings of three key films: Robocop, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and THX 1138, each of which typifies a particular form of science fiction fantasy. Challenging the boundaries usually seen between high and low culture, literature and film, Science Fiction Film reasserts the central role of fantasy in popular films, even those concerned with reason, science, and technology.

Thrillers
  • Martin Rubin
  • Published online:
    04 December 2009
    Print publication:
    28 March 1999
  • The thriller is perhaps the most popular and widespread movie genre - and the most difficult to define. Thrillers can contain gangsters or ghosts, space helmets or fedoras. They charge our familiar world with a spirit of exotic, old-fashioned adventure. They give us pleasure by making us uncomfortable - on the edge of our seats.Thrillers provides a comprehensive treatment of this genre, from silent serials to stalker films, from Alfred Hitchcock to Quentin Tarantino, from The Great Train Robbery to L.A. Confidential. This accessible, wide-ranging volume is designed to appeal to students and general filmgoers alike, and shows how this visceral, double-faced film genre has aroused our intense sensations throughout decades of American cinema.