The DeCarlo Movie Guide

Defining Genres

I have spent much time and effort contemplating the classification system of movies. In the film world, the word genre has two definitions. The first is a group of rough categories used to group similar types of stories. The Genre film, however, is a movie that adheres to a specific set of unspoken rules, giving the filmmaker a common form with which to convey meaning to the audience. As this is of no particular use to a guidebook, it is the first definition that I will be addressing.

Everyone has a different set of categories and many hours could be spent deciding in which category a specific movie should go. For example, most movies have humor in them, but at what point should you call it a comedy? To address this ambiguity, I examine the framework of a film: Is the basic premise inherently funny? Is the story plot-driven or character-driven? Is the "adventure" coincidental, or pivotal to the characters? My hope is that these questions provide slightly more objective rules to the categories than merely quantifying its elements.