Approaches to interpreting genre films. Romantic comedy and Annie Hall.

1. GENRE

2. Genre
A category of film, such as the western, the
horror film, the costume drama, the melodrama,
and so on, with recognizable conventions and
character types.

3. Using Genre to Interpret Films
1. Genre conventions
2. Genre evolution and transformation
3. Genre and cultural values
4. Genre and authorship

4. 1. Genre Conventions
Repetition and Variation
o Settings
o Character Types
o Costumes and Props
o Plots/Situations
o Conflicts
o Cinematic elements:
cinematography, mise-en-
scene

5. 2. Genre Evolution and
Transformation

6. 3. Genre and Cultural Values
• Genre films are the modern equivalent of a
cultural mythology.
• How do genre films reaffirm or subvert
cultural values?
• What cultural fantasies, fears, and conflicts do
genre films act out?

7. Genre and Authorship
How do great directors work with genre
conventions to assert a personal vision?
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

8. Romantic Comedy

9. “Romantic comedy is, arguably, the lowest of
the low. . . . Romcoms are viewed as ‘guilty
pleasures’ which should be below one’s notice
but . . . which satisfy because they provide easy,
uncomplicated pleasures.”
- Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl
Meets Genre

10. Annie Hall

11. 1. Conventions
• What romantic comedy conventions does
Annie Hall repeat, vary, or reject?
• What makes Annie Hall a romantic comedy?
• What makes it different from other romantic
comedies?

12. 2. Genre Evolution and Transformation

16. Romantic Comedy Cycles
1. Screwball comedies
2. The sex comedy
3. The radical romantic comedy
4. The neo-traditional romantic comedy
5. Today?

17. Screwball Comedy
It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday,
Bringing Up Baby
• Characters behave in unpredictable and
unconventional ways
• Fast dialogue, insults, wordplay
• Combination of sophistication and slapstick
• Love is a game which he and she both want to
win, usually end in a draw
• Romance is a prelude to marriage

18. Sex Comedy
Some Like It Hot, Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back
• Pits woman against man in a battle of wits, in
which the goal of both is sex, but the man
wants sex before and the woman after
marriage.
• Disguise and masquerade, usually with a
sexual motive
• A hierarchy of knowledge, in which he knows
more than she
• Reversions and inversions of the natural order

19. Radical Romantic Comedy
The Graduate, Annie Hall, Harold and Maude
• Self-reflexivity about the romantic relationship
and the importance of sex to both genders
• Self-reflexivity as a film
• Self-reflexivity as a modern and more realistic
form of romantic comedy in contrast to earlier
films

20. Neo-Traditional Romantic Comedy
When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle,
You’ve Got Mail, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
• Reasserts the “boy meets, loses, regains girl”
structure
• Mood of nostalgia
• De-emphasizing of sex
• Happy ending emphasizes the forming of a
lasting relationship

21. Today?

22. 3. Genre and Cultural Values
Romance
Marriage
Sex
Gender roles in a relationship

23. 4. Genre and Authorship