This thing about the way movie genres are differentiated according to
stylistic features that are of quite different kinds suggests the way
generic terminology has developed not for a consistent and exhaustive
taxonomy but for quicker and dirtier purposes that must satisfy fairly
pressing local concerns eg just knowing where to put the video back on the
shelf in the video store, or quickly telling someone what kind of a film
BEFORE SUNRISE is.
With the latter, while a friend waited in a car outside, I searched fast and
fruitlessly through the Comedy (as in Romantic Comedy) Bs and, on inquiry,
was directed to the Drama (Its sort of sad isn't it said the woman on the
counter.) Bs. By the time I got back to the car (with, from the Comedy Bs,
BROADWAY DANNY ROSE as well (Its sort of sad though too isn't it)) I felt
like I was in a crime thriller and should have stolen BREATHLESS as I passed
Arthouse/Classic.
Watching THE CIRCLE (World) a friend and I decided we might just put it
under Thriller. The scene where one of the women buys a shirt while waiting
for an imminently departing bus was as painfully tense as that scene in
NOTORIOUS when Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman try to funnel sandy Uranium
back into a champagne bottle. NOTORIOUS, by the way, like BREATHLESS was in
Arthouse/Classic. Comedy, Drama, Arthouse, Classic, etc! Not only are the
genres ad hocish, different video libraries have different genres of generic
classification. Northrop Frye (I suspect he would have put Westerns, Science
Fiction, Action under subgenres of Romance and differentiated them by the
emblematics of the different settings. Didn't George Miller put the MAD MAXs
under Campbell's Universal Hero Romance? We decided we would put THE WHITE
BALOON under Northrop's Romance too. ) where are you? Start abstracting!
Yet we understand all this arcane stuff like it is second nature. Its
fascinating in a sort of sad isnt it way.
Ross.
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