Jan Švankmajer, a Czech film director and artist is known mostly for his short animated films. In 1994, however, a change in his filmmaking career took place — he devoted himself to working only on feature films. This change of medium is connected both to the length of these films, and using language, narration and genre features typical of feature films. What is important, Švankmajer does not adjust his artistic visions to all the directives of a certain genre. Rather, the director chooses some elements of these genres, and creates new, hybrid qualities. Genres that have the biggest impact on his feature films are: horror, comedy, and speculative fiction.
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The idea of film noir, especially neo-noir, viewed as a stable and clear genre has as many supporters as detractors. The controversy is nothing new, and a compromise is still elusive. The reason for such an impasse is not merely the intransigent stance of opponents, the strength of their arguments, but is also a result of the hybridization of genres in main stream cinema (and elsewhere). I discuss the problem presented by film noir in the context of the question of generic identity on the example of the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning Fargo. The movie is an interesting case study as it does not make use of any of the genres typical for film noir in its unadulterated form (i.e. genres associated with film noir in its classical era). In Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen skillfully combine elements of the detective story (though not necessarily associated with hard-boiled fiction) with crime shows, gangster movie with thrillers about psychopaths, comedy with tragedy and family drama with melodrama of mischance. The result remains the same — the world of Fargo stays noir, dark and pessimistic and permeated with the absurd.
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From the Euro-American canon of contemporary filmmaking a selection of films has been made, the directors of which transition from low-budget, arthouse, regional first features made in the years 1997–1998 (mainly Cube and Pi, with occasional references to Run, Lola, Run and Following) to big-budget, Hollywood-funded blockbusters presented in the years 2009–2010 (Splice and Black Swan, occasionally referring to The International and Inception). Within this framework the issue of how generic patterns are used by these directors fond of narrative complexity is discussed. While in the debut features narrative complexity is the main issue, leading to a revisionist usage of sci-fi (Natali) and psychological thriller/horror (Aronofsky), as well as action film (Tykwer) and noir detection film (Nolan), in the 2009–2010 blockbusters narrative complexity is hidden behind apparently sincere generic imitation. This latter procedure, on closer inspection, reveals the allegorical recreation of genres as types (as defined by Laetz and McIver Lopes in The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy). The aim is to examine narratively complex designs as tools in establishing the authorial names of these directors, based on their first features, with attention paid to the consistency of film genres referenced.
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