jess_l_amortell wrote:

> --- 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?)


So we can date "genre" to the time of HATARI in both languages. Now:
how far back can we date it in either language? As applied to movies.


>
>
>
> > > > 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?

I'm not suggesting that moviemaking occurs in a vacuum of influences and
reasons! I am sorry if I gave this impression. Emails.

I'm saying that the art of the thing, when there is art, is not
prompted in order to do something just to be different, but rather to do
something to do what one wants to do. Are you saying that the big
reason Hawks made Rio Bravo was to counter High Noon? (He must have had
great faith in the perspicacity of American film criticism.) Are you
saying that he needed Zinnemann for inspiration? Or that the
inspiration for the movie is to show that a hero doesn't go it alone?
If so, arguably Rio Bravo was a response to Sergeant York, with the
same Gary Cooper going it alone and making the High Noon Cooper look
like a pip-squeak, no?

I concede that artists are in a dialogue with a zillion things, and that
Rio Bravo relates to everything that ever happened in the world prior to
its existence, and that artworks personify in some way their
civilization and culture, etc. But I do not think artists do art simply
by "defying" conventions. MTV always seems that way to me: films by
filmmakers who think they're genuine and aren't. The point is to go
your OWN way, not to imitate others in "defiance."

,