FILM AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES

Observations about (film) genre

The author explains the problem of the film genre based on the starting points set out in his text (»Modernism and the issue of genre«) in the 3-2-1, KRENI! reader (2006), and based on the discussion of the film studies section of the scientific meeting »Croatian Film Studies in European context «. Explaining the importance of the idea of genre for all the film communication segments, the author warns about the measure to which genre categories change as well as about the importance of the American culture (especially film) for understanding even extremely modernist fragments of the European cinema. Of course, many European cinemas were also industries, at least in some parts of their history. This can at least partly explain the fact that top European authors such as Hitchcock, Lang, Sirk and Murnau adapted (at least temporarily) to the American film industry. Prompted by the work of artists such as Lang, Hitchcock or Godard, the author concludes that also literature studies could profit from interpretative flexibilities of film studies and that also some long time ago recognized classics (Crime and Punishment, War and Piece) could be examined in a new light. The difference between film and literature could be seen as not only the fruit of the difference between the two fundamentally opposite media but also, at least to a certain extent, as the fruit of the difference between the usual interpretative modes of film and literature studies.

Nikica Gilić