genre film

English

Noun

genre film (countable and uncountable, plural genre films)

1. (countable) A film that was produced with the intent of fitting into a specific genre (such as science fiction, romantic comedy, horror, or film noir) with an existing audience.
   • 1991, Marcia Landy, Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama, →ISBN, page 473:

     But the general characteristics of the genre set limits on the individual genre film, which renders it simpler for the audience to follow.

   • 2004, Thomas Schatz, Hollywood: Formal-aesthetic dimensions: authorship, genre and stardom, →ISBN:

     Genre films may therefore contain a more accurate description and a more radical critique of the values of the society that produced them than can the serious film, which is so self-contemplative, so obsessed with its own aesthetic status, that it neglects its connection to the audience.

   • 2015, Liam Burke, The Comic Book Film Adaptation, →ISBN:

     A similar response is elicited by the genre film, with Langford suggesting that the “combination of sameness and variety is the linchpin of the generic contract”.

2. (uncountable) All such films, collectively.
   • 1998, Monique Guillory, Richard Green, Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure, →ISBN, page 241:

     While genre film tends to treat things as they are and avoids the trap of advocating them, exploitation film sensationalizes them.

   • 2009, Lincoln Geraghty, American Science Fiction Film and Television, →ISBN:

     While Dixon's views on the audience may not be to everybody's liking, it is hard not to agree with his assessment of genre film; science fiction film was most definitely entering a period of predictability.

   • 2003, Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader III - Volume 3, →ISBN, page 472:

     Nevertheless, I offer a tentative description of the representation of “race” and “blacks” in genre film.

   • 2012, John Sundholm, Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema, →ISBN, page 213:

     During the occupation, Johan directed many influential films with a high technical quality and pronounced sense of working in genre film, like the screwball comedy Mine Kære Koner (My Dear Wives, 1943) and the episodic Otte Akkorder (Eight Cords, 1944).