Theme A movie’s themeis a unifying idea that the
film expresses through its narrative or imagery.
Not every genre is united by a single, clear-cut the-
matic idea, but the Western comes close. Nearly
all Westerns share a central conflict between civi-
lization and wilderness: settlers, towns, school-
teachers, cavalry outposts, and lawmen stand for
civilization; free-range cattlemen, Indians, prosti-
tutes, outlaws, and the wide-open spaces them-
selves fill the wilderness role. Many classic
Western characters exist on both sides of this the-
matic conflict. For example, the Wyatt Earp char-
acter played by Henry Fonda in John Ford’s My
Darling Clementine(1946) is a former gunfighter
turned lawman turned cowboy turned lawman. He
befriends an outlaw but falls in love with a school-
teacher from the east. Early Westerns tend to sym-
pathize with the forces of civilization and order, but
many of the Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s val-
orize the freedom- loving outlaw, cowboy, or Native
American hero.
Gangster films from Howard Hawks’s Scarface
(1932) to Ridley Scott’s American Gangster(2007) are
shaped by three well-worn, but obviously resonant,
themes: rags to riches; crime does not pay; absolute
power corrupts absolutely. The thematic complexity
made possible by the tension between these aspira-
tional and moralistic ideas can provide the viewer a
more meaningful experience than one might expect
from a genre dedicated to career criminals.
Character Types While most screenwriters strive
to create individuated characters, genre films are
often populated by specific character “types.”
Western protagonists personify the tension between
order and chaos in the form of the free-spirited but
civilized cowboy or the gunslinger turned lawman.
Female characters also personify this tension, but
only on one side or the other—as schoolmarm or
prostitute, only rarely as a combination of both.
Other Western character types include the cunning
gambler, the greenhorn, the sidekick, and the set-
tler. John Ford packed nearly every Western char-
acter type into a single wagon in his classic
Western Stagecoach(1939). The horror and science-
fiction film antagonist is almost always some form
of “other”—a being utterly different than the
movie’s protagonist (and audience) in form, atti-
tude, and action. Many of these movie monsters are
essentially large, malevolent bugs—the more for-
eign the villain’s appearance and outlook, the bet-
ter. When the other is actually a human, he often
wears a mask designed to accentuate his otherness.SettingSetting—where a movie’s action is located
and how that environment is portrayed—is also a
common genre convention. Obviously, Westerns
are typically set in the American West, but setting
goes beyond geography. Most classic Westerns take
place in the 1880s and 1890s, an era of western set-
tlement when a booming population of Civil War
veterans and other eastern refugees went west in
pursuit of land, gold, and cattle trade. The physical
location of Monument Valley became the land-
scape most associated with the genre, not because
of any actual history that occurred there, but because
the scenic area was the favorite location of the pro-
lific Western director John Ford. Since science-
fiction films are speculative and, therefore, look
forward rather than backward, they are usually set
in the future; sometimes in space, sometimes in
futuristic earth cities, sometimes in a postapoca-
lyptic desolation, but almost always in an era and
place greatly affected by technology. While gang-
ster films are almost always urban in setting, hor-
ror films seek the sort of isolated locations—farms,
abandoned summer camps, small rural villages—
that place the genre’s besieged protagonists far from
potential aid.Presentation Many genres feature certain ele-
ments of cinematic language that communicate
tone and atmosphere. For example, horror films
take advantage of lighting schemes that accentuate
and deepen shadows. The resulting gloom helps to
create an eerie mood, but horror films are more
than just dark; filmmakers use the hard-edged
shadows as a dominant compositional element to
convey a sense of oppression, distort our sense of
space, and conceal narrative information. Film noir,
a genre that also seeks to disorient the viewer and
convey a sense of unease (although for very differ-
ent thematic and narrative reasons), employs many
of the same lighting techniques.88 CHAPTER 3TYPES OF MOVIES