What is a film genre?

A genre is a category of films sharing recognizable conventions of subject, style, and narrative, such as the Western or musical, that shape both how films are made and what audiences expect from them.

What is the auteur theory?

It is the idea that certain directors imprint a consistent personal vision across their films, making the director the 'author' whose recurring themes and style are central to understanding the work.

Genre and Authorship

Genre and authorship are two of the principal frameworks for organizing and interpreting films: genre groups films by shared conventions and audience expectations, while authorship attributes creative vision and consistency to the director or other agents.

Definition

The interrelated frameworks of genre, which classifies films by recurring conventions and expectations, and authorship, which interprets films through the creative agency of their makers.

Scope

This area covers the study of how films are categorized and to whom they are attributed. It examines genre theory, the definition, history, and ideological work of categories such as the Western, musical, and horror film, and authorship, from the auteur theory and its critiques to the wider question of who, among directors, writers, stars, and studios, shapes a film's meaning. It also includes the related study of stardom and of narrative construction and screenwriting.

Sub-topics

Core questions

How are film genres defined, and what cultural work do they perform?
Is the director the author of a film, and what does authorship mean in cinema?
How do stars function as meaningful images and economic assets?
How is cinematic narrative constructed and written?

Key theories

Genre as a cultural contract: The view, developed by Altman and the contributors to genre readers, that genres are not fixed essences but dynamic agreements among industry, critics, and audiences about expectations and meaning.
The auteur theory: The position, advanced by Sarris from the French politique des auteurs, that the director's recurring stylistic and thematic signature is the chief source of a film's artistic value.

History

Auteurism arose from the 1950s French politique des auteurs and was imported to the United States by Andrew Sarris in the early 1960s, prompting decades of debate refined by structuralist and poststructuralist critiques of the author. Genre study developed alongside it, moving from descriptive accounts of individual genres toward theories of genre as an industrial and cultural process, as in Altman's semantic/syntactic and pragmatic models.

Debates

The death and persistence of the author: Poststructuralist critiques challenged the romantic auteur, dispersing meaning among texts, readers, and industry; yet authorship persists as a marketing category and an analytical convenience, keeping the debate alive.

Key figures

Rick Altman
Andrew Sarris
John Caughie
Barry Keith Grant

Seminal works

altman1999
sarris1962
grant2012

Frequently asked questions

What is a film genre?: A genre is a category of films sharing recognizable conventions of subject, style, and narrative, such as the Western or musical, that shape both how films are made and what audiences expect from them.
What is the auteur theory?: It is the idea that certain directors imprint a consistent personal vision across their films, making the director the 'author' whose recurring themes and style are central to understanding the work.