FILM 3290 - Film Genres: Crime

5 credit hours
Formerly - FILM 4910-01, 17WQ

How have crime and violence been central concerns in cinema since its beginnings? What kinds of genres and subgenres have formed around the representation of the criminal and violence? What is the relationship of crime cinema to the modern world and how does it engage with key technologies like the fingerprint, biometrics and DNA that map and profile the body? How does the crime film engage with race, class, gender and nation? From the gangster film, ‘whodunnit’, film noir and neo-noir, to the heist film, erotic thriller, serial killer film, crime television and the work of Hitchcock, Coppola and Nolan, we will survey a variety of different narrative and generic formulations of the crime film, from juvenile delinquents on the run, to murder amongst friends, to the revenge drama. We’ll look at how crime cinema engages with discourses in criminal law and psychology, including sociopathy, mens rea and actus reus, the insanity defense and the M’Naghton rule. We’ll also examine the serial killer in recent cinema, pulp fiction, and television. Throughout we will consider the narrative function of “detection” and its relationship to the spectatorial experience of consuming and reconstructing specific questions of the whodunit– namely, who did it? And why? Films may include some of the following: Shallow Grave, Cape Fear, Blood Simple, Heavenly Creatures, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Se7en, Oldboy, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal. This class will fulfill your genre requirement for Film Majors. GN.