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A film genre is a Genre for Film based on similarities either in the narrative, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film.
Drawing heavily from the theories of literary genre criticism, film genres are usually delineated by "conventions, iconography, settings, Narrative film, stock character and actors". One can also classify films by the tone, theme/topic, mood, film format, target audience, or Film budgeting. Hayward, Susan. "Genre/Sub-genre" in Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (Third Edition). Routledge, 2006. p. 185–192 These characteristics are most evident in Genre fiction, which are "commercial feature films that, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters and familiar situations" in a given genre. Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 1
A film's genre will influence the use of filmmaking styles and techniques, such as the use of flashbacks and low-key lighting in film noir; tight framing in ; or fonts that look like rough-Hewing logs for the titles of Western films.Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 11 In addition, genres have associated Film score conventions, such as lush for romantic Melodrama film or electronic music for science fiction films. Genre also affects how films are broadcast on television, advertised, and organized in video rental stores.
Alan Williams distinguishes three main genre categories: Narrative film, avant-garde, and Documentary film.Alan Williams, "Is a Radical Genre Criticism Possible?" Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 121–2
With the proliferation of particular genres, film subgenres can also emerge: the legal drama, for example, is a sub-genre of drama that includes courtroom- and trial-focused films. Subgenres are often a mixture of two separate genres; genres can also merge with seemingly unrelated ones to form , where popular combinations include the romantic comedy and the Action comedy. Broader examples include the docufiction and docudrama, which merge the basic categories of Narrative film and non-fiction (documentary).Judith Butler and genre theory.
Genres are not fixed; they change and evolve over time, and some genres may largely disappear (for example, the melodrama film). Not only does genre refer to a type of film or its category, a key role is also played by the expectations of an audience about a film, as well as institutional discourses that create generic structures.
One such model is the Cinematic Taxonomy developed by Iranian author and theorist Alireza Kaveh in his book Cinematic Category. This taxonomy introduces a five-part classification system: medium, style, genre, format, and tradition.
Drawing heavily from the theories of literary genre criticism, film genres are usually delineated by conventions, iconography, Narrative film, formats, characters, and actors, all of which can vary according to the genre. In terms of standard or Stock character, those in film noir, for example, include the femme fataleGrant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 17 and the Hardboiled; while those in Westerns, stock characters include the Teacher and the Gunfighter. Regarding actors, some may acquire a reputation linked to a single genre, such as John Wayne (the Western) or Fred Astaire (the musical film).Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 18 Some genres have been characterized or known to use particular film format, which refers to the way in which films are shot (e.g., 35 mm, 16 mm or 8 mm) or the manner of presentation (e.g., anamorphic widescreen).
Genres can also be classified by more inherent characteristics (usually implied in their names), such as settings, theme/topic, mood, target audience, or Film budgeting/type of film production.
, in particular, often organize their stories by genre, focusing their attention on three specific aspects: atmosphere, character, and story. A film's atmosphere includes costumes, , locations, and the visceral experiences created for the audience. Aspects of character include archetypes, , and the goals and motivations of the Protagonist. Some story considerations for screenwriters, as they relate to genre, include theme, tent-pole scenes, and how the rhythm of characters' perspective shift from scene to scene.
| +Genres and subgenres !Genre !Description !Subgenre(s) !Examples | |||
| Action film | Associated with particular types of spectacle (e.g., , Chase scene, combat) |
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| Adventure film | Implies a narrative that is defined by a journey (often including some form of pursuit) and is usually located within a fantasy or exoticized setting. Typically, though not always, such stories include the quest narrative. The predominant emphasis on violence and fighting in action films is the typical difference between the two genres. |
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| Animated film | A film medium in which the film's images are primarily created by computer or hand and the characters are Voice acting. Animation can incorporate any genre and subgenre. |
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| Comedy film | Defined by events that are primarily intended to make the audience laugh. |
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| Drama film | Focused on emotions and defined by conflict, often looking to reality rather than sensationalism. |
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| Fantasy film | Films defined by situations that transcend and/or by settings inside a fictional universe, with narratives that are often inspired by or involve human . |
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| Historical film | Films that either provide more-or-less accurate representations of historical accounts or depict fictional narratives placed inside an accurate depiction of a historical setting. |
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| Horror film | Films that seek to elicit fear or disgust in the audience for entertainment purposes. |
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| Melodrama film | A genre, mode, Film styles or sensibility characterized by an emphasis on intense and exaggerated emotions and heightened dramatic situations. Much like film noir, its recognition as a genre with specific formal and thematic characteristics came retrospectively, and was driven by a 1970s critical re-evaluation of the films of Douglas Sirk, who came to be considered the greatest exponent of melodrama. The canonical form of melodrama, associated with the 1950s Hollywood films of Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, George Cukor, Billy Wilder and Joseph Losey, among others, is known as "family melodrama" and centers on middle-class family conflicts, often generational, within contexts of social mobility and emotional trauma. (1987). 9780851702001, British Film Institute. ISBN 9780851702001 Unlike drama, melodrama functions as a code that opposes realism, exaggerating the conventions of representation and mise-en-scène to depict the emotional states of the characters. |
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| Musical film | A genre in which songs performed by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters or may serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers". |
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| Film noir | A genre of stylish crime dramas particularly popular during the 1940s and '50s. They were often reflective of the American society and culture at the time. |
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| Pornographic film | Pornographic films are typically categorized as either softcore or hardcore pornography. In general, softcore pornography is pornography that does not depict explicit sexual activity, sexual penetration or extreme Sexual fetish. It generally contains nudity or partial nudity in sexually suggestive situations. Hardcore pornography is pornography that depicts penetration or extreme fetish acts, or both. It contains graphic sexual activity and visible penetration. |
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| Romance film | Characterized by an emphasis on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters, with romantic love or the search for it typically being the primary focus. |
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| Science fiction film | Films are defined by a combination of imaginative speculation and a scientific or technological premise, making use of the changes and trajectory of technology and science. |
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| Thriller film | Films that evoke excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible. |
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| Western film | A genre in which films are set in the American west during the 19th century. |
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) was used to organize films according to type. By the 1950s André Bazin was discussing the concept of "genre" by using the Western film as an example; during this era, there was a debate over Auteur versus genre. In the late 1960s the concept of genre became a significant part of film theory. Film genres draw on genres from other forms; Western fiction existed before the Western film, and musical theatre pre-dated film musicals.Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 4 The perceived genre of a film can change over time; for example, in the 21st century The Great Train Robbery (1903) classes as a key early Western film, but when released, marketing promoted it "for its relation to the then-popular genres of the chase film, the Rail transport film and the crime film". A key reason that the early Hollywood industrial system from the 1920s to the 1950s favoured genre films is that in "Hollywood's industrial mode of production, genre movies are dependable products" to marketing to audiences – they were easy to produce and it was easy for audiences to understand a genre film.Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 7–8 In the 1920s to 1950s, genre films had clear conventions and iconography, such as the heavy coats worn by gangsters in films like Little Caesar (1931). Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press, 2007. p. 8. The conventions in genre films enable filmmakers to generate them in an industrial, assembly-line fashion, an approach which can be seen in the James Bond spy-films, which all use a formula of "lots of action, fancy gadgets, beautiful woman and colourful villains", even though the actors, directors and screenwriters change.
Many films cross into multiple genres. Susan Hayward states that spy films often cross genre boundaries with thriller films. Some genre films take genre elements from one genre and place them into the conventions of a second genre, such as with The Band Wagon (1953), which adds film noir and detective film elements into "The Girl Hunt" ballet. In the 1970s New Hollywood era, there was so much parodying of genres that it can be hard to assign genres to some films from this era, such as Mel Brooks' comedy-Western Blazing Saddles (1974) or the private eye parody The Long Goodbye (1973). Other films from this era bend genres so much that it is challenging to put them in a genre category, such as Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) and William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971).
Film theory Robert Stam challenged whether genres really exist, or whether they are merely made up by critics. Stam has questioned whether "genres are really 'out there' in the world or are they really the construction of analysts?". As well, he has asked whether there is a "... finite taxonomy of genres or are they in principle infinite?" and whether genres are "...timeless essences ephemeral, time-bound entities? Are genres culture-bound or trans-cultural?". Stam has also asked whether genre analysis should aim at being descriptive or prescriptive. While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (Comedic genres, melodrama) or from other media (the musical film). Some are performer-based (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films) or budget-based (blockbusters, low-budget film), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (), location (the Western), or sexual orientation ("New Queer Cinema").
Some use genre as a means of determining what kind of plot or content to put into a screenplay. They may study films of specific genres to find examples. This is a way that some screenwriters are able to copy elements of successful movies and pass them off in a new screenplay. It is likely that such screenplays fall short in originality. As Truby says, "Writers know enough to write a genre script but they haven't twisted the story beats of that genre in such a way that it gives an original face to it".
Cinema technologies are associated with genres. Huge widescreens helped Western films to create an expansive setting of the open plains and desert. Science fiction and fantasy films are associated with special effects, notably computer generated imagery (e.g., the Harry Potter films).
In 2017, screenwriter Eric R. Williams published a system for screenwriters to conceptualize narrative film genres based on audience expectations. The system was based upon the structure biologists use to analyze living beings. Williams wrote a companion book detailing his taxonomy, which claims to be able to identify all feature length narrative films with seven categorizations: film type, super genre, macro-genre, micro-genre, voice, and pathway.Eric R. Williams (2025). 9781315108643, Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice. . ISBN 9781315108643
Film genres may appear to be readily categorizable from the setting of the film. Nevertheless, films with the same settings can be very different, due to the use of different themes or moods. For example, while both The Battle of Midway and All Quiet on the Western Front are set in a context and might be classified as belonging to the war film genre, the first examines the themes of honor, sacrifice, and valour, and the second is an anti-war film which emphasizes the pain and horror of war. While there is an argument that film noir movies could be deemed to be set in an urban setting, in cheap hotels and underworld bars, many classic noirs take place mainly in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road.
The editors of filmsite.org argue that animation, pornographic film, documentary film, silent film and so on are non-genre-based film categories.
Linda Williams argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the category of "body genres" since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror; melodramas are designed to make viewers cry after seeing the misfortunes of the onscreen characters; and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal. This approach can be extended: comedies make people laugh, tear-jerkers make people cry, feel-good films lift people's spirits and inspiration films provide hope for viewers.
Eric R. Williams (no relation to Linda Williams) argues that all narrative feature-length films can be categorized as one of eleven "super genres" (Action film, Crime fiction, fantasy, Horror film, Romance film, science fiction, slice of life, Sports film, Thriller film, War film and Western film). Williams contends that labels such as Comedy film or drama are more broad than the category of super genre, and therefore fall into a category he calls "film type". Similarly, Williams explains that labels such as animation and musical are more specific to storytelling technique and therefore fall into his category of "voice". For example, according to Williams, a film like Blazing Saddles could be categorized as a Comedy film (type) Western (super-genre) Musical film (voice), while Anomalisa is a drama (type) Slice of Life (super-genre) animation (voice). Williams has created a seven-tiered categorization for narrative feature films called the Screenwriters Taxonomy.
A genre movie is a film that follows some or all of the conventions of a particular genre, whether or not it was intentional when the movie was produced.
Over time, a genre can change through stages: the classic genre era; the parody of the classics; the period where filmmakers deny that their films are part of a certain genre; and finally a critique of the entire genre. This pattern can be seen with the Western film. In the earliest, classic Westerns, there was a clear hero who protected society from lawless villains who lived in the wilderness and came into civilization to commit crimes. However, in revisionist Westerns of the 1970s, the protagonist becomes an antihero who lives in the wilderness to get away from a civilization that is depicted as corrupt, with the villains now integrated into society. Another example of a genre changing over time is the popularity of the neo-noir films in the early 2000s ( Mulholland Drive (2001), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) and Far from Heaven (2002); are these film noir parodies, a repetition of noir genre tropes, or a re-examination of the noir genre?
This is also important to remember when looking at films in the future. As viewers watch a film they are conscious of societal influence with the film itself. In order to understand its true intentions, we must identify its intended audience and what narrative of our current society, as well as it comments to the past in relation with today's society. This enables viewers to understand the evolution of film genres as time and history morphs or views and ideals of the entertainment industry.
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