in a particular genre; piggyback on the success of a
previous genre hit; and even recycle props, sets,
costumes, and digital backgrounds. Just as impor-
tant, the industry counts on genre to predict ticket
sales, presell markets, and cash in on recent trends
by making films that allow consumers to predict
they’ll like a particular movie. In other words: give
people what they want, and they will buy it. This
simple economic principle helps us understand the
phenomenal growth of the movie industry from the
1930s on, as well as the mind-numbing mediocrity
of so many of the movies the industry produces. The
kind of strict adherence to genre convention driven
solely by economics often yields derivative and for-
mulaic results.
If genre films are prone to mediocrity, why are
so many great filmmakers drawn to making them?
The beginning of the answer can be found, of all
places, in a statement by the Nobel Prize–winning
poet T. S. Eliot, who wrote: “When forced to work
within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed
to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas.”
Eliot was talking about poetry, but the same concept
can be applied to cinema. Creatively ambitious writ-
ers and directors often challenge themselves to cre-
ate art within the strict confines of genre convention.
A genre’s so-called rules can provide a foundation
upon which the filmmaker can both honor traditions
and innovate change. The resulting stories and styles
often expertly fulfill some expectations while sur-
prising and subverting others as the filmmaker ref-
erences, refutes, and revises well-established
cultural associations. Genre has intrigued so many
of our greatest American and European filmmakers
that many entries in the canon of important and
transformative movies are genre films. The God fa-
ther(1972; director: Francis Ford Coppola), Good-
fellas(1990; director: Martin Scorsese), and Bonnie
and Clyde(1967; director: Arthur Penn) are all
gangster films; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey(1968) is science fiction; Carol Reed’s The
Third Man (1949) and even Jean-Luc Godard’s86 CHAPTER 3TYPES OF MOVIES
Genre masterpieces Not all genre movies are disposable
formula pictures churned out for the indiscriminate masses.
Many of cinema’s most revered films are also genre movies.
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968) incorporates
virtually every standard science-fiction genre element,
including speculative setting, special effects, and a decided
ambivalence toward the benefits of technology. Yet Kubrick’s
skills as a storyteller and stylist make 2001 a work of art
that transcends conventional attitudes toward genre movies.