Genres are essential in an audience’s understanding of film. By categorizing films, the audience’s understanding of it becomes easier, as they have been acculturated to certain codes, actions, and even types of narratives. With this acculturation, audiences learn to expect something from a certain film given a certain genre.
However, the classification of films is not as simple as that. Because many genres are not even original to film, they have the ability to exert a certain amount of influence on other genres. As this blurs the lines between genres, the classification of films becomes difficult. Add to this the changing conventions, culture, and society at large, and you have genres that are also subject to change. You have movies within a single genre that seems worlds apart because of the cultural influences behind the respective films. Variations are created within a single genre.
MELODRAMA: Roman Holiday vs. Chung King Express
Melodrama is a genre that addresses “issues of gender and class, discovery of lost identity, strenuous pursuit of freedom from oppression, and self-sacrifice for the cause of others” (Kolker, 1999). The film Roman Holiday incorporates all of these themes into a single story: a princess feels that she has lost herself amidst all her royal obligations, and she tries to find herself by going on a freewheeling adventure through the streets of Rome. But after she finds herself torn between loving an American journalist and fulfilling her duties as a member of the royal family, she decides to sacrifice this love for her patriotism and love for the people. In touching all these elements, Roman Holiday then becomes a typical romantic comedy, falling cleanly into the genre of melodrama.
However, the film Chung King Express does not seem to address any of these issues, and it would be easy to say that it does not fall under the genre. But it does, and it chooses to give form to the literal definition of melodrama: drama with music. As the song “California Dreamin’” –together with the Chinese version of Cranberries’ “Dreams”—is played repeatedly throughout the film, the theme of dreaming for something more and the individual desires of the characters are conveyed to the audience. Music, then, becomes a medium for “continuity and [provides] emotional support for the images” (Kolker, 1999).
Melodrama is also characterized by closure and the sense of security it brings. The audience feels secure after watching Roman Holiday because it has the ending they expected: at the time the film was made, it was unthinkable for a princess to abdicate the throne. Because of this mentality society had, to have the princess neglect her royal duties was an unacceptable ending, and the film would not have succeeded in its goal to have its audience empathize and identify with the protagonists.
The film Chung King Express, on the other hand, is an open-ended film. Just like other open-ended films, the audience is left to wonder what happens after. The absence of closure leaves open the possibility that things may not work out for the protagonists in the end: Badge 663 may not end up with Faye after all, or they may break up soon after. The endless possibilities for an ending leave the audience feeling anxious instead of safe. Roman Holiday closes the book effectively, telling the audience that Princess Ann will always remember Joe Bradley, but they will never get together. In contrast, Chung King Express not only leaves the book open, it leaves the last page blank for the viewer to write his own conclusion. The “happily ever after” is not a guarantee in this instance.
Melodrama, rather than depict reality as it is, “turns the outrageous into the plausible and asks us to believe that plausibility is close to reality” (Kolker, 1999). Roman Holiday is the perfect example of this: it is not everyday that a princess escapes her royal guards to wander around Rome and fall in love with a commoner. It’s not reality. But the film tells us that it could be. Outrageous as it may seem, there always lies the possibility of it happening, and this brings it closer to home; it makes us believe that –even for just an hour and a half—it is reality, even if it’s not.
What Chung King Express does is the opposite: it depicts reality and what is plausible within these confines. It is entirely realistic for people to feel lonely after a breakup and to develop crushes on total strangers. But the film takes all these moments and makes them outrageous: it is not realistic to talk to inanimate objects and to eat expired cans of pineapples to ease one’s loneliness, or to break into your crush’s apartment and clean it everyday.
But even in doing this, Chung King Express shows the audience that this is reality. Unlike Roman Holiday which fabricates a fiction and tries to draw the audience into this so-called reality, Chung King Express shows the reality for what it is and brings to light the idiosyncrasies that people may have, no matter how outrageous they may be. These idiosyncrasies and eccentricities may seem deviant to the dominant culture: highlighting them shows how the film moves away from the confines of culture and the ideology that dominates it.
FILM NOIR: Out of the Past vs. Chinatown
Darkness is a key element of the film noir, both in its visual technique and its content. In terms of content, both films show the influence of the detective fictions of the 1930s: Out of the Past is a gangster movie, while Chinatown is a movie that has the very basic plot of sticking one’s nose into others’ business and discovering all sorts of dark secrets, such as incest and corruption.
Aside from detective fictions, the influence of German expressionism in the genre is also evident, especially in the film Out of the Past, as it makes use of the extreme ends of the black and white spectrum. This stark contrast also shows how two-dimensional the characters are: no matter how Kathie tries to pretend to be nice, she always ends up a scheming double-crosser till the very end, and Jeff always ends up trying to come out a good guy --even if he is made to do bad things-- because that’s just who he is.
However, the development of Technicolor gives film noir a flexibility it did not possess before. Filming in black and white had been the norm at the time, and this was the medium chosen to depict reality, even if there is nothing realistic about black and white. But as the norms change, it is obvious that the only way to depict a diverse and highly complex world is to show it in color as well; filming in black and white does not, in my personal opinion, do justice to a world that is not as simple as that.
Given this, the film Chinatown shows how the film noir can operate beyond the black and white spectrum. Darkness is still a key element, but as shadows are cast by sunlight and by streetlamps, it is a more natural kind of darkness that governs the picture. Lighting helps the development of the plot and the characterization. For instance, there is significance in the way actors move from the light and into the shadow, or vice versa. The dimly lit “Water and Power” offices hint at the corruption that underlies the whole story. Using a kind of darkness that audiences are familiar with thus allows them to see and identify with the evil lurks in the real world.
Damsels in distress seem to characterize the melodrama: in Roman Holiday, Princess Ann is saved by Joe Bradley. In Chung King Express, even Faye may seem to be saved from her loneliness and obsession by getting Badge 663 in the end. “The female character of melodrama is always on a precipice” (Kolker, 1999), and it is the man’s duty to save her in the end, just as the knight-in-shining-armor would.
This kind of mentality is born of the cultural prejudice a patriarchal society has against women, where they are seen as weak and fragile beings that need to be rescued. Although the gender issue is something that can never be resolved, it is enough to note that gender issues find their way into the cinema because of film’s capacity to act as a cultural medium. And because melodrama is a genre unoriginal to film, the damsel-in-distress stereotype is then expressed in other melodramatic forms, such as literature and theater, further reinforcing this mentality of society.
In contrast, the film noir reverses the role of women: from the damsel-in-distress, the woman becomes the femme fatale. One of the essential elements of the film noir is to have “a weak male character who falls prey to a female predator” (Kolker, 1999). This is evident in both Out of the Past and Chinatown, where the women were always one step ahead of the men, keeping the men in the dark until the end. With this, the film noir goes against the norms of society and tries to present women in a different light.
Melodrama is a very pervasive genre, originating in literature and theater. Because of its origins, it has the capability to transcend into other film genres as well. After all, literature and theater may combine to form film to a certain extent: literature takes the form of a screenplay; theater comes in the very acting that takes place. Thus, melodrama as a film genre is not strictly contained in itself.
There are certain melodramatic elements in Out of the Past and Chinatown despite the fact that they belong to a different genre. Both films end in the death of a main character, as both Jeff and Kathie die at the end of Out of the Past; and Evelyn dies at the end of Chinatown. These deaths represent closure for the audience, even leaving them with a sense of security: they know that, finally, the bad guys get what they deserve and no one will be harmed by their wrongdoings again.
The film noir also expresses the paradox of melodrama: “the liberation of its characters is also their transgression” (Kolker, 1999). In film noir, the woman is characterized as scheming and cunning, a characterization that deviates from the norms society has set. The only way to make the woman conform to the norm is to “save” her in the end, as if she was a damsel-in-distress. With the darkness that pervades the film noir, the only way to do this is to kill her and have death save her from her transgressions. Thus, the woman’s very liberation –breaking away from the role society has ascribed for her—becomes her transgression: she must die in the end.
The film noir in the melodrama
However, the film noir is also able to influence a pervasive genre such as the melodrama. In Chung King Express, the first segment had a femme fatale in the character of Brigette Lin. As a drug dealer, her character lends a certain amount of darkness to an otherwise light romantic-comedy. She remains nameless throughout the film, leaving Badge 223’s life as quickly as she had entered it, and this provides an air of mystery for the film.
Roman Holiday also has certain dark elements in its story. One example is the conspiracy between Joe Bradley and his photographer-friend to put Princess Ann in compromising situations just so they can make money out of the photographs. Keeping each other in the dark about their true identities can also be interpreted as an element of darkness in the film. Bitter, ironic dialogue –an essential element of the film noir—is also peppered throughout the film, such as the double-meanings of Princess Ann’s replies to the press during the last scene.
Thus, it is not only melodrama that influences the film noir with its characteristics and elements. Film noir is also able to spice up a genre such as the melodrama by breathing in an air of mystery, darkness, and irony.
Conclusion
Genres exist to help the audience understand films and expect certain things from them. They exist for the audience, not for the film. In this light, a film is not and cannot be defined simply by its genre. Many other elements borrowed from other genres may be incorporated into the film, and it is the certain blend of these elements that creates the variety of films that exist today and blurs the dividing lines between such compartmentalization.
In my opinion, films need to be seen simply as that: films. There really is no need to confine a film to a single genre because this only limits the film to being something simple enough to define. If a film is bold enough to mix all the genres together –have the elements of melodrama, horror, film noir, western, and what-have-you all present and accounted for—categorizing it into a single genre only limits the vast potential of the film. It would only meet a certain amount of expectations and would never be good enough for its audience because somehow, the genre ascribed to it will dictate that something about it is off. And it would be a shame to make films like that go to waste only because the audience strives to understand it in such a limited and generic way.
If genres have begun to transcend the lines that contain it, if they have begun to influence genres other than their own, then maybe it’s also time for the audience to step over these limiting lines and boundaries.
Maybe it’s time to step out of the box.