From the back of the book:
Genre films, with their distincitive iconography and conventions, have dominated the history of the American cinema from its beginnings until the present day. As a system of filmmaking, genre has been one of the most important factors in making the cinema both an art and a hoghly successful form of popular entertainment.
in 1977, Barry Grant edited FILM GENRE:THEORY AND CRITICISM, the first critical anthology devoted entirely to the subject of genre in film. Now, in an extensively revised and updated volume entitled FILM GENRE READER, he has gathered together twenty-three essays comprising much of the best recent writing in the field and including the work of such noted film critics and scholars as John G. Cawelti, Thomas Elsaesser and Paul Schrader.
Divided into two parts, the anthology cover the full range of theoretical issues and ctitical approaches involving film genre. The first secion concentrates on genre theory, covering such topics as generic experience. The essays in the second section analyze a wide variety of particular genres, including westerns, science fiction, film noir, melodrama, romantic comedy, musicals, docudrama, horror and gangster and disaster films.
Genre films, with their distincitive iconography and conventions, have dominated the history of the American cinema from its beginnings until the present day. As a system of filmmaking, genre has been one of the most important factors in making the cinema both an art and a hoghly successful form of popular entertainment.
in 1977, Barry Grant edited FILM GENRE:THEORY AND CRITICISM, the first critical anthology devoted entirely to the subject of genre in film. Now, in an extensively revised and updated volume entitled FILM GENRE READER, he has gathered together twenty-three essays comprising much of the best recent writing in the field and including the work of such noted film critics and scholars as John G. Cawelti, Thomas Elsaesser and Paul Schrader.
Divided into two parts, the anthology cover the full range of theoretical issues and ctitical approaches involving film genre. The first secion concentrates on genre theory, covering such topics as generic experience. The essays in the second section analyze a wide variety of particular genres, including westerns, science fiction, film noir, melodrama, romantic comedy, musicals, docudrama, horror and gangster and disaster films.
