Notable musicals include Le Million(1931; direc-
tor: René Clair); The Three Penny Opera(1931; direc-
tor: G. W. Pabst); 42nd Street(1933; director: Lloyd
Bacon); Footlight Parade (1933; director: Lloyd
Bacon); Swing Time(1936; director: George Stevens);
The Wizard of Oz(1939; director: Victor Fleming);
Yankee Doodle Dandy(1942; director: Michael Cur-
tiz); Meet Me in St. Louis(1944; director: Vincente
Minnelli); On the Town(1949; directors: Stanley
Donen and Gene Kelly); An American in Paris(1951;
director: Vincente Minnelli); Singin’ in the Rain(1952;
directors: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly); The Band
Wa g o n (1953; director: Vincente Minnelli); French
Cancan(1954; director: Jean Renoir); A Star Is Born
(1954; director: George Cukor); Oklahoma! (1955;
director: Fred Zinnemann); The King and I(1956;
director: Walter Lang); West Side Story(1961; direc-
tors: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise); The Music
Man(1962; director: Morton DaCosta); The Sound
of Music (1965; director: Robert Wise); The Jun-
gle Book (1967; director: Wolfgang Reitherman);
Cabaret(1972; director: Bob Fosse); Jesus Christ
Superstar(1973; director: Norman Jewison); Grease
(1978; director: Randal Kleiser); Hair(1979; direc-
tor: Milos Forman); Blood Wedding(1981; director:
Carlos Saura); Pennies from Heaven(1981; director:
Herbert Ross); Moulin Rouge!(2001; director: Baz
Luhrmann); Chicago (2002; director: Rob Mar-
shall); Teacher’s Pet(2004; director: Timothy Björk-
lund); and Rent(2005; director: Chris Columbus).
Evolution and Transformation of Genre
Filmmakers are rarely satisfied to leave things as
they are. Thus, as with all things cinematic, genre is
in constant transition. Writers and directors, rec-
ognizing genre’s narrative, thematic, and aesthetic
potential, cannot resist blending ingredients gleaned
from multiple styles in an attempt to invent excit-
ing new hybrids. The seemingly impossible mar-
riage of the horror and musical genres has resulted
in a number of successful horror-musical fusions,
including Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture
Show (1975), Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors
(1986), and Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the
Katakuris(2001). Antonia Bird melded horror with
another unlikely genre partner, the Western, for her
1999 film Ravenous. Sometimes the hybridization
takes the form of a pastiche, as in Quentin Taran-
tino’s Kill Billcycle (Vol. 1, 2003; Vol. 2, 2004), films
that borrow not only from the Japanese chambara
(sword-fighting) genre but from many Hollywood
genres, including the Western, musical, thriller,
action, horror, and gangster. Guillermo del Toro’s
Hellboyfranchise combines horror, action, romance,
fantasy, and science fiction.
And genres develop inwardly as well. Subgenres
occur when areas of narrative or stylistic special-
ization arise within a single genre. Thus, Westerns
can be divided into revenge Westerns, spaghetti
Westerns, bounty-hunter Westerns, cattle-drive
Westerns, gunfighter Westerns, cavalry Westerns,
and so on. Zombie movies, slasher flicks, vampire
films, the splatter movie, and torture porn are but
a few of the many manifestations of the horror
genre.
To understand how complex a single genre can
become, let’s consider comedy. Movies are catego-
rized as comedies because they make us laugh, but
we quickly realize that each is unique because it is
funny in its own way. Comedies, in fact, prove why
movie genres exist. They give us what we expect,
they make us laugh and ask for more, and they
make money, often in spite of themselves. As a
result, the comic genre in the movies has evolved
into such a complex system that we rely on defined
subgenres to keep track of comedy’s development.
The silent-movie comedies of the 1920s—
featuring such legends as Max Linder, Charlie
Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle,
Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd, many of whom
worked for producer Mack Sennett—were known
as slapstick comedies because aggression or vio-
lent behavior, not verbal humor, was the source of
the laughs. (The term slapstickrefers to the two
pieces of wood, hinged together, that clowns used
to produce a sharp sound that simulated the sound
of one person striking another.)
Although after the arrival of sound movie com-
edy continued the sight gags of the slapstick tradi-
tion (Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, W. C.
Fields), it also increasingly relied on verbal wit.108 CHAPTER 3 TYPES OF MOVIES