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The Romantic Comedy and Crime Drama

This paper examines two frequently used film genres, the romantic comedy and the crime drama, and compares and contrasts three films that combine these genres, using the elements of danger and criminal associations to heighten the romance of the story. Billy WilderÆs Some Like It Hot (1959) sets its darkly comic plot in motion when two musicians witness the St. ValentineÆs Day massacre and flee from the killers in disguise, each finding a romantic partner in the process. George ArmitageÆs Gross Pointe Blank (1997) sends a hit man to an unsettling reunion with his high school class and the high school sweetheart he abandoned at the prom. Martin BrestÆs Gigli (2003) tries to generate romantic sparks between two hired guns vying to impress their boss with their criminal skills. Each film uses classic elements of these two very different genres to explore the relationship between men and women, and each is very much the product of a particular point in social history. Together, these three movies try to put a very different spin on the archetypal ôboy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girlö scenario.

Most plays, novels, and other forms of fiction have always been possible to classify into genres. Wes D. Gehring writes:

Genre is a French word for a literary type. In film study it represents the division of movies into groups which have similar subjects and/or themes . . . . Historically, genre lineage can be traced back to the seemingly always intellectual present Poetics of Aristotle, wherein literature of the day was broken down into types. Thus, for much of the recorded history of man, varying formulaic genre guidelines have been present and growing (1).

Genres are most often classified by commonalities of setting, theme, or approach to their material. The two most basic genres are comedy and tragedy, stories that either end happily or tragically for their protagonists. Gehring argues that familiar story st...

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The Romantic Comedy and Crime Drama. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:34, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708491.html