This is a key audio-visual genre characterised by a humorous and often critical view of reality. While it is the genre with the greatest variety of subgenres, the main areas are the physical (slapstick of chases and accidents) and verbal (such as sitcom) types. It is characterised by the frequency of gags that provoke laughter and, except for some bittersweet or grotesque comedies, involves a happy ending.
The round dance (La Ronde) | The tree of life | Léolo
This is the main audio-visual genre characterised by its realistic themes, plots and characters, a normally pessimistic approach and a hopeless or tragic outcome. It often involves social criticism, and movements such as Italian neorealism (1940s) and the English Free Cinema (1950) fall into this category, as does part of romantic and melodramatic cinema.
The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford
This is a realistic, dramatic, epic and adventure genre whose stories are set in the American West in the period from the mid to late nineteenth century. In the classical period it was one of the main genres, along with the musical, but since the sixties, after the eras of the psychological western, the spaghetti western and the revisionist western, its influence has declined although it has not disappeared, instead adapting to the new trends such as postmodern cinema.
Sunset Boulevard | The rear window | M (M einen stadt sucht einen mörder) | Casino | Fireworks (Hana-Bi)
The thriller is the supergenre which deals with plots relating to crime, encompassing, among others genres, film noir, the detective story, suspense and even realistic terror. Robbery, kidnapping, rape and murder are the main dramatic elements. Each branch has its own characteristics. Film Noir is usually about detectives who move in sophisticated environments within labyrinthine stories involving femme fatales and all-powerful villains. It was originally seen in films from the 1930s and 1940s adapted from novels.
Il est difficile d'être un dieu | The Kubrick zoom | Cloverfield
This is a key audio-visual genre. It is opposed to realism and involves magic and the desire to transgress the laws of nature. It includes animation and science fiction and is split into the genres of adventures, the musical, unrealistic horror and part of poetic cinema. Its two main lines of work are light fantasy, around the moral concept of good (Georges Méliès, Walt Disney), and its opposite, dark fantasy (David Cronenberg, Jan Svankmajer).
This is a genre in which music and dance become the main vehicle of the film and the way in which the characters express their emotions. The musical, usually linked to love stories, ranges from comedy to fantasy, realistic drama and tragedy. It is one of the main genres of classical cinema which found a new manifestation from the seventies in the short format of the video clip.
Apocalypse now | The Kubrick zoom
This is a genre of a realistic nature, often based on real facts and close to adventure films, action films and also psychological drama. It deals with the war conflicts of the twentieth and twenty first centuries (previous eras are considered historical films). In general, the plots deal with the progressive loss of fellow soldiers as a result of a mission to accomplish, a battle or any type of confrontation, so the tone is usually hopeless and critical.
The tree of life: L'arbre de vie | Hiroshima my love | The Kubrick zoom | 8½ | Code unknown | Léolo | Fireworks (Hana-Bi)
This is the type of film that does not fall into any of the genres and is linked to the personal styles of the directors whose poetics form a consistent body of work that in most cases generates imitators. Although some directors have managed to establish their own styles within a genre, such as Alfred Hitchcock within the thriller genre, most auteur films (Federico Fellini, David Lynch, Alain Resnais, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Stanley Kubrick) were produced from the sixties onwards and can only be defined individually.
I am Cuba (Soy Cuba) | Man with a movie camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom)
This is a factual genre but unlike news or reporting it can involve a significant degree of subjectivity. The format is broad enough to cover everything from educational films (including internet tutorials) to films that are promotional (making of), auteur, fake documentary (mockumentary) and hybrid films that may involve mixing fact and fiction.
This is a set of techniques that give movement to drawings, paintings, dolls, objects and materials of all kinds, also including humans. Although any genre can be depicted through animation, including the documentary, the natural home for this format is the fantasy genre, which allows for the breaking of the natural laws to which realistic genres are subject.