Film Genre (English Class) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Film Genre (English Class) - Research Paper ExampleThe success of the mobster dart with audiences later influenced filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, whose 1972 epos The Godfather casts its criminal characters as appealing archetypes of good family men, doing whatever is necessary to survive and thrive in a dangerous world. The growing popularity of aggroupster films in the prototypic three decades of the twentieth century owes a great deal to the American publics fascination with notorious real- animation gangsters such as Al Capone. The gangster cut a dashing figurehis sharp dressing style, marked by pinstripe suits, fedoras, and fancy neckties, created a whole new image for the American gangster, dower to legitimize their status as businessmen and allowing them to represent themselves as a model of the new American ideal for the urban working class (Beshears 197). Of course, his c arefully-crafted superficial appearance served to disguise the fact that Capone was, for all intents and purposes, little more than a common criminal. Like troopsy of his criminal contemporaries, Capone made a fortune sell liquor after Prohibition was enacted in 1920. Yet Capone and his cronies were not roundly vilified for their criminal activity. Instead, the public became enamored with the heady tales of the ongoing struggle between gangsters and the constabulary who sought to shut them down. The old moral order (199) had broken downin its place, many Americans had begun to embrace a nihilistic outlook on life (198) driven by disillusion in the wake of World War I. The resulting lack of optimism and distrust of authority created an environment in which gangsters were painted or so as folk heroes. They were perceived by many to be Robin Hood-type figures fighting the establishment on behalf of the downtrodden. In reality, however, the gangsters were solely in it for themselves, eager to make a profit even through the most nefarious of means. Based in large part on the infamous persona of criminals like Capone, the gangster film became a popular genre, exploding into success in the early 1930s. The gangster film is a sub-category of crime films in which the main characters are part of a gang or are otherwise affiliated with a crime organization or mob. The film typically depicts the rise and fall of the main character, a man whose ruthlessness, cunning, and unrepentant narcissism take him to the top and cause his subsequent downfall. The movies are set in large cities so as to provide a impression of the secret world of the criminal dark nightclubs or streets with lurid neon signs, fast cars, piles of cash, sleazy bars, contraband, seedy living quarters or rooming houses (filmsite.org). The movies are generally bloodbathsmultiple characters die as a result of their association with the gangster. Though in the earliest gangster films, much of the violence occurred off-screen, later films almost gleefully depicted the random violence associated wi th the gangster way of life. Additionally, these films are crafted as morality tales Horatio Alger or pursuit of the American Dream success stories dour upside down in which criminals live in an inverted dream world of success and wealth