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Impressionism andIdeology_: TheStateof RecentGenreFilmCriticism CarlosClarens. Crime Movies. NewYork: Norton.1980.351pp. StephenNeale. Genre. London: BritishFilm Institute.1980.74pp. EugeneRosow.Born to Lose: The Gangster Film inAmerica. NewYork: Oxford UniversityPress. 1978. 422+xvpp. ThomasSchatz.Holl\'wood Genres: Formulas. Filmmaking. and the.Studio System. NewYork: RandomHouse, 1981.297 +xivpp. BarryK. Grant When film study began to mature in the mid-seventies, interest in the narrative film, which had been nurtured a decade earlier by auteurism's enthusiasm for popular film, waned in favor of more formal concerns. Critical interest shifted from the signified of films to the practice of signification, from what a film means to how it produces meaning. Structural film was particularly amenable to such an approach. No longer was film assumed to have an inviolable meaning; rather, meaning was now understood to arise from the conjunction of various discursive codes at work in the cinematic text. Auteurs no longer existed apart from such contexts, nor could they acceptably be studied in this manner again; as Roland Barthes had shown, writing degree zero was impossible. 1 Eventually the interest in signification brought about a renewed concern for the classical narrative film. Genre films have necessarily been central in this regard; for to approach the study of popular film from the generic viewpoint requires the consideration of social contexts, both economic and historical (conditions of production and consumption), conventions and mythic functions (semiotic codes and structural patterns), and the place of particular filmmakers within genres (tradition and the individual auteur). Thus genre criticism may be seen as a focal point for the overlapping but often separate approaches and concerns of Marxism, semiology, structuralism and auteurism. Canadian Review of American Studies. Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1983, 107-18 108 Barry K. Grant Yet genre criticism has to a large extent failed to exploit its manifold interests. Aside from Stuart Kaminsky's groundbreaking but tentative American Film Genres, there has until recently been no other book that systematically explores the genre approach to film. Stanley J. Solomon's Beyond Formula, for instance, is more a series of short discussions of individual (genre) films than generic analysis.2 To be sure, there has been in the last few years a notable increase of scholarly articles on the subject, and some are essential reading. By and large, however, genre criticism remains plagued by impressionism and the lack of a sound theoretical base. A survey of recent publications on genre reveals the state of contemporary genre criticism, both its strength and its problems. In Crime Movies, Carlos Clarens approaches gangster/crime films in a manner similar to his earlier treatment of horror and science fiction in An Illustrated History of Horror Films (1967), providing a historical and critical overview of the genre. Clarens himself vaguely notes a similarity between the two genres: "Crime films work in terms of transgression and retribution, just as horror movies tend to symbolize the normal and the monstrous in terms of what society may or may not tolerate" (p. 14).Indeed, the gangster, a creature of uncontrollable appetites, is occasionally depicted according to the visual conventions of horror films-witness, for example, Cagney's climactic d½ath in Gordon Douglas' neglected Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Clarens, though, does see a fundamental distinction between the two genres, asserting that crime films depend on topical feedback while horror films work on a psychological, "nonhistorical level" (p. 336) (a claim which, curiously, seems to refute much of the earlier book). Insisting on the topicality of crime films allows Clarens to concentrate on the history of crime in America, and he provides a wealth of fascinating information on this score. One discovers, for example, that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932was so hateful to the American public that even Al Capone, while in prison, offered his help in solving the case (reading about Capone and his image of himself makes such moments in gangster films as Cagney's agreeing to die a "coward'' in Angels With Dirty Faces for the ultimate salvation of the Dead End Kids seem somehow less fantastic); or, to take another example, that a 1931Chicago poll revealed that Hollywood stars and Chicago gangsters headed the list of best-known American personalities...

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