Wednesday 14 May 2014

Genre Blog

For my paper I have decided to write about gangster movies in film
There are several types of gangster movies. They are best divided into sections by region.

There are your British gangster films. These movies are mainly centered on thugs and hooligans. Gangsters with very little code of respect or honor. They usually involve a lot of fist fighting, drugs, and a lot of unsavory language.
American gangster films usually involve a cast of Italian-Americans who work in their own organizations known as families.
There are also your Chinese/Japanese gangster movies. These are usually a bit more violent and focus of the Yakuza or similar fictional gangs or respected and feared businessman and their crime related involvements. There are also plenty of martial art films that are gang related that center on one lone individual taking the syndicate down.
Other counties have their own gangster movies, but because these are the predominant, I would like to focus on these.
A British Gangster movie is very violent. It deals with street thugs and football hooligans and it contains a large portion of fist fighting and the use of knives and melee weapons, with a gun normally taking an appearance to signify the films peak point.
It is very much a portrayal of the lifestyle dealt with in London and several hard hit areas, because of the violent nature in life. The vision of the film is made to replicate these truths and portray the lives of British gangsters perfectly.
An important factor in British gangster films is the football influence. Britain being one of the dominant countries for club loyalty has spurred on a nation of football hooligans. This is a general theme when playing with British gangster films because it is a huge part of our culture.
So it is almost impossible for another country to replicate it in their cinema.
Because the movies are based on the low lives of society, they often have low budget to work with. Because it is not dealing with glitz and glamour, they don't need all the resources a film would normally need.
This makes them easy to produce so they are made with the same quality and aesthetics of every other film, and since movies like The Football Factory and This is England have been released, we have seem many duplicates of these types of film. Artistic vision has often been replicated based on several successes in that regions cinema.

With American gangster films they try to make things a bit more serious. Less continuous violence, and funnel elements of historical facts to utilize the reality of the story.
The most successful gangster movies to date include The Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco and many others.
The thing about all these movies is that they are inspired by true stories.

The Godfather was based on the Five Families of New York that ran since 1931. Although not directly told through their point of view, all the themes and elements that made the film where influenced by the real gangsters of those times.
Goodfellas is another good example. It is a slightly dramatized retelling of the story of Henry Hill, a real life gangster between 1955 and the 1980s, and it is told through first person narrative.

In comparison to British movies, American ganster movies are usually more serious. The actors are well spoken, with an honorable dress code. Mainly suites, bowler hats and so forth. They are fluent with their language, keep swearing to a minimum compared to British movies, and are essentially less upbeat, prolonged, and have a assortment of music tracks spanning from the 30s to the late 80s.

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