What are the classifications of movies by subject matter? What are the classification criteria?

I wanted to tell you briefly, but I'd better be more specific.

Movie type:

In film theory, genre refers to the basic means of film classification. A genre usually refers to some movies with similar narrative elements.

Classification of film types:

There are three commonly used criteria to classify film types: scene, emotion and form. A scene refers to the place where the movie takes place. Emotion refers to the emotional stimulation conveyed by the whole movie. Movies may also be shot with specific equipment, or presented in a specific style, that is, form.

● Scenes

Crime film: characters appear in the field of criminal behavior.

Film noir: The main characters appear in the realm of nihilism and existentialism, or describe the protagonist in this way.

Historical movies: happened in the past

Science fiction movies: Characters appear in different realities, usually in the future or in space.

Sports film: sports and places belonging to a certain sport.

War movies: battlefields and places that belong to war.

Westerns: from colonial times to modern American West.

● Emotion

Action film: usually contains a moral struggle between "good" and "evil", which is carried out by violence or physical strength.

Adventure film: contains danger, risk or opportunity, and often contains high fantasy.

Comedy: trying to cause laughter

Feature film: mainly focusing on the development of characters.

Fantasy film: Fantasy novels (such as myths and legends) that transcend reality.

Horror movies: trying to arouse the fear of the audience

Reasoning film: the process from the unknown to the known by discovering and solving a series of clues.

Romantic movies: detailing the elements of romantic love

Thriller: An attempt to excite or excite the audience.

● Form

Animation: Static pictures made by hand or computer constantly present the dynamic illusion of manufacturing.

Biography: a film that changes the factual basis to varying degrees and dramatizes the lives of real people.

Documentary: A true tracing of an event or a person to gain an understanding of an idea or problem.

Experimental film (avant-garde film): a film created and released to test the audience's reaction or expand the boundaries of film production/story presentation.

Musical film: a film with all or part of the characters singing from time to time.

Short film: Try to include the elements of a "standard length" movie in a short time.

● Age

Children's films: Compared with family films, children's films do not try to attract audiences other than children.

Home movies: trying to attract people of all ages, suitable for young children. Like Disney movies.

Adult movies: movies made only for adult audiences, which may contain violence, disturbing themes, obscene language or explicit sexual behavior. Adult movies may also be used as synonyms for pornographic literature.

Film genre criticism:

Not what type?

There are other standards for film classification besides genre. For example, according to the author's standards, the film is divided according to the director. Some classification standards are also called types at will, but this definition is problematic. For example, an independent film is sometimes regarded as a genre, but in fact, independent production cannot determine the story of the film. Such a film can belong to any genre.

Some people think it is necessary to distinguish between genre and film style. The film style involves photography, editing, sound and so on. A style can be applied to any type. The film genre determines the most obvious content of the film, and the film style determines how to present this genre on the screen. Style can be determined by intentional artistic elements such as plot structure, scene design, lighting, photography and performance. Some people also say that this distinction is too simplistic, because some types are mainly identified by style. Many historians argue about film noir, mainly focusing on whether it is a genre or just a film-making style that was often imitated in its heyday.

Can movie types be defined?

Type is usually a vague concept with no clear boundaries. Many works span many styles. In this regard, the film theorist Robert Stam wrote:

Some lingering problems have been bothering type theory. Do types really "exist" in the world, or are they just the structure of analysts? Is the classification of types limited or unlimited in principle? Is this type time-independent, Platonic, or a transient, time-limited entity? Is genre restricted by culture or cross-culture? ..... Should type analysis be descriptive or explanatory?

Some types are based on story content (war movies), while others are borrowed from literature (comedies, melodramas) or other media (musicals). Some are based on actors (Aste-Rogers movies) or box office (box office blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (art movies), ethnic identity (black movies), region (westerns) or sexual orientation (queer movies).

Many types are established by viewers or corresponding supporting publications such as magazines and websites. Movies that are difficult to classify by genre are usually not very successful. Therefore, film types are also useful in the fields of marketing, criticism and consumption.

John Truby, a Hollywood story consultant, said, "... you must know how to transcend categories (genres) in order to bring originality and surprise to the audience."

Some screenwriters use genre as a means to decide what kind of plot or content to use in the script, and they get examples by learning certain types of movies. This is also a way for some screenwriters to copy the elements of successful movies into new scripts, but such scripts are usually not original enough. As John Truby said, "Writers know how to write genre scripts, but they don't process the rhythm of this genre to make it appear as original."

For screenwriters, it is meaningful to use different or opposite elements in violation of the elements in existing works. Originality and surprise are the elements of a good film story. For example, Italian westerns are widely known because they subvert the types of westerns and turn good people into both bad and good. Before that, there were some things in western films that are now called genre stereotypes, such as good people wearing white hats, bad people wearing black hats, and good people always win duels. After Italian westerns broke the "rules" of genre films, traditional westerns also disappeared.