© 2025 by Luciano Mariani, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This volume is a collection of papers published at cinemafocus.eu

The volume is available both as a pdf document and as a paperback, providing QR codes for easy retrieval of online materials.

Request your free pdf copy at info@cinemafocus.eu

 Contents

 Introduction

What do we mean when we talk, e.g. of westerns, musicals, biopics, comedies? What defines a film genre? What functions do genres serve in film production and consumption? Do genres survive? This paper deals with such questions - and more - in the form of an Interactive Workshop.

 Film genres: features, functions, evolution

This paper, in the form of an Interactive workshop, aims at exploring the origin of genres, their functions in cinema and their evolution, with particular emphasis on the latest developments. We first ask why we need genres at all and examine the variety of classification criteria that can be used. Then we focus on the specific features of genre films, analysing their conventions and their narrative structures. We then explore how different agents (from producers to audiences, from critics to film scholars) have used and still use genres, and highlight their economic, sociocultural and communicative functions. Finally, by taking a historical perspective, we explore how genres have evolved in the course of time and how modern cinema extensively use genre mixing and hybridization, thus pointing to the future of this important but complex category of film analysis.

 Musicals (1)

A journey through one of the most fascinating and popular film genres, from the early talkies of the '30s (with the stunning performances of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) through the glamorous productions of the '40s and '50s (from An American in Paris to Singin' in the rain), from the new interpretations of this genre in the '60s and '70s (from West Side Story to Saturday night fever), to the most recent innovations (from Moulin Rouge! to La-La Land). However, this paper also explores the stylistic development of the musical through time, the meanings it has conveyed and the social functions it has fulfilled in different historical and cultural contexts.

 Musicals (2): Hollywood and Broadway: A story of synergy

The two major American entertainment industries, Hollywood and Broadway, have always entertained close relationships, taking advantage of their respective products to obtain maximum financial returns. So films have often been adapted into musical comedies, and theatre shows into films. In recent decades, these cultural products have become part of a complex multimedia panorama, where the transfer no longer takes place only from screen to stage and vice versa, but through several different media: musical films and shows become the basis for DVDs/Blu-Rays, music CDs, concerts, videogames, theme parks such as Disneyland and for all the forms of merchandising (from clothing to toys to food and drinks ...). And new Broadway adaptations inspire new films, in a constant hybridization process that feeds the global entertainment market.

 Film noir (1)

This paper, in the form of an Interactive Workshop, attempts to construct a definition of film noir by analysing its distinctive features (i.e. characters, contexts and settings, types of stories and narrative modes) and by discussing its peculiar visual style.  The origins and sources of film noir are then explored with reference to specific historical and socio-cultural contexts. The paper ends with a discussion of the persistence of film noir, which continues to inspire modern films across various genres, maintaining, but also updating and adjusting, its peculiar visual and thematic elements.

 Film noir (2): Femmes fatales in classical and neo-noir

Part 1: Classical film noir

The femme fatale: a woman displaying an irresistible erotic charm which a man cannot escape, ensnaring him and leading him to his death ... This image of an alluring, seductive and at the same time destructive woman has been rooted in the collective imagery since the most ancient literary sources. The image of the femme fatale appears very early in silent cinema. However, it is only with the so-called "hard boiled" detective novels, starting from the '30s, and with the corresponding film noir which were based on them, that the femme fatale starts to show the features which would make her an icon. The classical film noir reflects the anxieties and uncertainties of the war and post-war periods, with the new roles taken up by women and the corresponding changes in social beliefs and attitudes, with particular reference to the “male gaze” which continues to be the filter through which female figures are portrayed.

Part 2: The neo-noir

Towards the end of the '50s, the traditional femme fatale starts showing signs of change. In the following two decades, which saw the success of what was later called "New Hollywood" or "Hollywood Renaisssance", the femme fatale appears much less frequently and loses her central position in the narrative, now more often playing the role of passive victim rather than the role of seductive and destructive schemer. At the start of the ‘80s, in the so called neo noir, the femme fatale returns centre-stage, but is no longer a fatal temptress - she has now changed into an active and autonomous protagonist, fully capable of taking matters into her own hands. It’s the "Reagan decade" which was opening up a season of limitless liberalism, self-centredness, hedonism, extreme individualism and triumph of the image over and beyond substance. The new femmes fatales of “Fatal attraction” and “Basic instinct” are a reminder of the social perception of the frailty of the family as well as of the danger represented by "open" sexual relationships (at a time when AIDS was tragically spreading around) – with the implied message that the nuclear family needs to be protected as a social institution against these threatening, ambitious single women.

 Horror: The paradoxical lure of horror films

The constant, if not growing, popularity of horror makes the question in the title even more intriguing: why do people buy a product for which, out of the context of the movie, they feel different negative and increasingly stronger emotions, from fear to terror, from shock to disgust? What are the psychological mechanisms which allow viewers, not only to bear with intrinsically unpleasant if not repulsive images and sounds, but also to feel pleasure in this experience? In other words, how is it possible to be shocked or disgusted and, at the same time, lured and charmed by what we see and hear?

Melodrama (1): Classical Hollywood melodrama

Is melodrama a genre? Or can we trace melodramatic scenes and sequences across a variety of genres? The difficulty in answering such questions should not make us forget that, in its heyday, Hollywood produced a number of movies that we can readily identify as “classical” Hollywood melodramas – from Magnificent obsession to Home from the hill to Rebel without a cause, directors such Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and Nicholas Ray were able, not only to meet contemporary popular expectations, but also, and more importantly, to portray with pathos and irony the plights of the American family caught in one of its most acute and disturbing critical periods.

Melodrama (2): The persistence of melodrama: From Sirk to Fassbinder

                           to   Haynes

Three different directors working at different moments in film history shoot three movies loosely based on the same story: Douglas Sirk’s All that heaven allows, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear eats the soul and Todd Haynes’s Far from heaven deal with the same basic theme - how individual freedom is repressed by social conventions and overt discrimination - although treated differently: Sirk makes emotions "overflow" into the surrounding environment, so that all elements of the mise-en-scène become "living replacements" of what happens to the characters; Fassbinder is more directly interested in social critique, but, through his "distancing effects" is able to make us fully and painfully aware of the characters' emotions; and Haynes brings the classical melodramatic elements into new life, infusing them with a sensibility that can very well resonate with contemporary audiences. Taken together, such films witness the persistence of melodrama through changing times and social contexts.

 American teen pics: Movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

A comprehensive exploration of the various sub-genres or "cycles" that have made the history of "teen movies", from their early days of pre-War War II cinema to the new century. Feature films have been selected to illustrate both the socio-cultural meanings expressed in the movies themselves and the trends that have marked the evolution of movies "for" and "about" teenagers over several decades of film history.

 Puzzle films (1)

Since Quentin Tarantino's movies started to appear in the 1990s, there has been a steady increase in films challenging the basic conventions of classical Hollywood cinema, i.e. chronological time order, clear character motivations, linear cause-and-effect narrative development. New storytelling styles challenge viewers by providing complex structures that invite (oblige?) them to pay close attention to what they see and hear in order to make sense of an otherwise "puzzling" narrative - showing alternative, intriguing ways in which cinema never ceases to attract (and baffle!) audiences.

Puzzle films (2): “Impossible” puzzle films

Puzzle films are examples of complex storytelling, which has become one of the important new ways in which cinema has evolved, particularly since the 1990s, providing audiences with plots that are increasingly difficult to understand. This Dossier deals with two distinct but related issues. The first part will focus on narrative strategies, i.e. it will try to describe what "impossible complexity" means and how movies manage to achieve it. The second part will consider viewers' strategies, i.e. what viewers do to cope with the task of finding meaning and unravelling the "puzzles" that confront them.

© 2025 by Luciano Mariani, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This volume, a collection of papers published at cinemafocus.eu and here revised and updated,  explores how cinema has dealt with the question of sexual and gender identities throughout its history, both reflecting and helping to define such identities.

The volume is available both as a pdf document (with direct links to online content) and as a paperback (providing QR codes for easy retrieval of the same online materials).

 Request your free pdf copy at info@cinemafocus.eu

Contents

 Introduction: Some basic issues

Since the question of sexual and gender identities is often fraught with widely different interpretations and ideological biases, this Introduction makes it clear that the basic assumption is that complex phenomena like sex and gender need to be considered through a trans-disciplinary approach, i.e. with a wide range of methodological tools (biological, sociological, anthropological, psychological and cultural). Starting with the basic distinction between sex and gender, then the case is made for the existence of different sexual and gender identities as a start for a discussion of  how cinema both reflects and helps to define such identities.

 Gender inequality: Some facts and figures

 Gender inequality is clearly at work in all sectors of the cinema industry, as well as being reproduced, and sometimes challenged, on the screen in all movies that deal with the relationship between the sexes (i.e. practically, in most movies ever produced). This paper provides "hard data" to evaluate the extent of gender inequality in the film sector.

 Gender stereotypes in the movies

 Cinema both reflects reality and contributes to shape and maintain the views and stereotypes which are part and parcel of that same reality. Film genres, in particular, largely rely on gender stereotypes in providing recognizable portraits of women and men, like the “femme fatale”, the “career woman” or the “tough superhero”. However, not all films perpetuate gender stereotypes – some break or challenge them, so that what cinema offers today is a wide range of female and male characters who are witness to the complexities and ambiguities of what it means to be a woman or a man in a particular culture.

 The evolution of female and male gender roles through cinema's history

 Since the early days of cinema, gender roles have been portrayed in films according to the prevailing traditional and patriarchal stereotypes that have for a long time assigned more or less fixed social and psychological attributes to women and men. However, cinema's history has also inevitably reflected major political, economic and sociocultural changes, which have affected the roles of women and men within their societies and their cultures. This paper explores how female and male gender roles have evolved and how films continue to reflect, but also consolidate or challenge, the representations of women and men on the screen.

 Homosexuality in film history

 This paper is an in-depth exploration of how homosexuality has been represented in the history of cinema. Homosexuals have always had some form of "visibility", but for a long time only as comic or tragic masks, perpetuating a system of attitudes based on heterosexual norms and homophobia. Only since the 1990s has cinema started to provide more realistic, honest and respectful representations of homosexual figures who could finally aspire to be, on equal terms with heterosexuals, well-rounded characters, not simply conditioned by their sexual orientation.

 Transgender identities on screen

 Only in recent decades have transgender people - i.e. those who experience an incongruity between their biological sex and their gender identity - found realistic, honest and respectful representation on the screen. For much of the history of cinema, the more superficial image of the "transvestite" prevailed, especially in comedies and, to some extent, in horror films. Only recently has space been given to the psychological, social and cultural problems that the condition of "transgender" often implies, with all-round portraits of personalities, in films that often give voice to the experiences that accompany the often painful and demanding journey of those who intend to change their sexual identity and, together, their place in the world.

 The “patriarchal system” in the movies: Crises and ambiguities

 This final paper explores the complex system of beliefs, values and attitudes, known as patriarchy or patriarchal system, which underlies many acts of discrimination and violence still widely carried out on women (but also on men). Cinema has always represented the many faces of patriarchy: from the man’s power to his victims, from the condemnation of women to the crises of the system itself, testified both by the weaknesses of male figures and by female resilience and reactions, as well as by the increasing number of women directors, who engage in exposing the injustice of the system but also in imagining a more balanced future of relationships between the sexes.