--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher <tag@s...> wrote:
> Genre
> is an academic invention. The concept didn't exist in French until
> Anglo-Americans took over the word.
>
> Do you think Hawks ever heard the word genre before, say, 1970?


Do you mean this literally? He would have heard it in the (possibly unlikely)
event that he'd read, say, V.F. Perkins' pre-'65 review of HATARI! (later
collected in "The Movie Reader"): "...equally noticeable is the way in which
Hawks has, on occasion, destroyed genre. In _Hatari!_ sequences which
(according to the rules of the African genre) ought to be menacing are played as
comedy...", etc. Also, Perkins is expanding here on a passage from Rivette:
"...if he has ennobled each genre by making in turn the best gangster film
(_Scarface_), the best air film (_Only Angels Have Wings_), the best war film
(_Air Force_), the best western (_Red River_), and finally the best comedies ...
it is because he has always known, in each case, how to take what is essential
and great from the genre and to mix his personal themes with those which
American tradition had already deepened and enriched." (Was the French word for
"genre" something else?)


> > > Do you really believe that someone writing a story or directing a scene
> > > or playing a part is studiously contemplating what everyone else has
> > > done and deliberately striving to do it differently?

Wasn't RIO BRAVO supposed to have been a response to HIGH NOON?