film crime

Film genres are categories, classifications or groups of films that have a similar, familiar or instantly recognizable patterns, techniques or conventions that include one or more of the following: setting, content, themes, plot, motifs, styles, structures, situations, characters, and stars (filmsite.org and notes). There are many categories of film genre. These categories can cover practically any film ever made by man, although film categories can never be precise. By isolating the various elements in a film and categorizing them in genres, it is possible to easily evaluate a film within its genre and allow for meaningful comparisons and some judgements on greatness. Some genres are considered period-specific, occurring primarily in one time period. One such example is film noir (filmsite.org).

One specific type of film genre is the crime and gangster genre. These films are developed around the actions of criminals and/or gangsters. They are often based around bank robbers or ruthless hoodlums who disobey the law. They make their way through life by stealing and murdering people. There are many ways to identify crime and gangster films. A few ways to do so is to look at the story line and characters(randomhouse.com).

Crime stories in this genre often highlight or glorify the rise and fall of a particular criminal (s), gang, bank robber, murderer

or lawbreakers in personal power struggles or conflict with the law and order figures, or rival gang. Real-life gangsters and crime reports are often the basis for many crime and gangster films.

A significant plot characteristic in these films is often a rivalry with other criminals in gangster warfare. These plots include questions to how the criminal is going to apprehended by the law. According to Horatio Alger gangster films are morality tales. They are stories in which the criminal lives in an inverted dream world of success and wealth. Although criminals are doomed to fail and an inevitable death, they are portrayed as the victims of circumstance, because they are often told from the criminals point of view (filmsite.org.).

The characters in gangster films are usually materialistic, street-smart, immoral, meglo-maniacal, and self-destructive. By using a tough cruel façade while showing an ambitious desire for success, they rise to power. The crim...

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...ng to fashion, morality, and the prevailing definition of what constitutes illegal and immoral activities. There is even a recognizable gangster “look”, regardless of the era, that depends on an insatiable appetite for flamboyant clothes that marks him as a strutting peacock and a social misfit (Yaquinto xii). The faces of the gangsters have also changed over the years, not just because movie stars shine and fade away, but because the images of real-life criminals have changed. Gangsters have nearly always come from the bottom of society and get their start in the gangs that thrive on America’s meanest streets (Lexis-Nexus). The personnel of gangs has changed over the years to reflect the newest wave of underdogs who stir together anger and unrealized ambition to cook

up the gangster persona (Yaquinto xiii).In a society that doesn’t value these people, they find employment and abundant reward in the Underworld. In the 1960’s, after the women’s movement, a woman’s finger is becoming placed on the trigger more and more. All the exciting elements in gangster films keep drawing us to them and make us love them and they will continue to do so, even if we know it is all make-believe.