Film Genre: Action

Action movies are a film genre wherein the story is largely told through physical action as opposed to dialogue. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero. While action has long been an element of films, the "Action film" as a genre of its own began to develop in the 1970s. The genre is closely linked with the thriller and adventure film genres. While action films have traditionally been a reliable source of revenue for movie studios, relatively few action films garner critical praise. While action films have traditionally been aimed at male audiences, from the early teens to the mid-30s, many action filmmakers from the 1990s and 2000s added female heroines in response to the times, glorifying the strong female archetype.

These movies have tremendous impact, continuous high energy, lots of physical stunts and activity, possibly extended chase scenes, races, rescues, battles, martial arts, mountains and mountaineering, destructive disasters (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), fights, escapes, non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous heroes - all designed for pure audience escapism with the action sequences at the core of the film.
They almost always have a resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, life-threatening circumstances, or an evil villain, and/or trapped or chasing each other in various modes of transportation (bus, auto, ship, train, plane, horseback, on foot, etc.), with victory or resolution attained by the end after strenuous physical feats and violence (fist fights, gunplay). Action films have traditionally been aimed at male audiences, ages 13 to the mid-30s in both American and world-wide markets.

During the 1920s and 1930s, action-based films were often "swashbuckling" adventure films in which Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn wielded swords in period pieces. The long-running success of the James Bond series of spy films in the 1960s and 1970s helped to popularize the modern day action film. The early Bond films were characterized by quick cutting, car chases, fist fights and ever more elaborate action sequences. The series also established the concept of the resourceful hero, who is able to dispatch the villains with a ready one-liner. Early American action films usually focused on maverick police officers, as in Bullitt (1968), The French Connection (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). These were among the earliest films to present a car chase as an action set-piece. However, the action film did not become a dominant form in Hollywood until the 1980s, when it was popularized by actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. The 1988 film Die Hard was particularly influential on the development of the genre in the following decade.

Notable action film directors from the 1960s and 1970s include Sam Peckinpah, whose 1969 Western The Wild Bunch was controversial for its bloody violence and nihilist tone. Some of the influential and popular directors from the 1980s to 2000s include James Cameron (the first two Terminator films, Aliens, True Lies); John Woo (Hong Kong action films such as Hard Boiled and US-made English-language films such as Hard Target); Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down); The Wachowski Brothers (the sci-fi The Matrix trilogy) and Michael Bay (Bad Boys 2).

I will use ¨The World Is Not Enough¨ as my movie to analyze; my case study. It was first published in 1999, and it’s the nineteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film was directed by Michael Apted and revolves around the assassination of Sir Robert King by Renard, and Bond's subsequent assignment to protect King's daughter, Elektra, who had previously been held captive by Renard. During his assignment, Bond unravels a scheme to increase petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul. Despite the film's mixed critical reception, it earned over $361 million worldwide. This movie uses the spy genre as it’s usually focused more on the exploits of a super-intelligent man, rather than a super-strong man. The spies are usually one-step ahead of the villains, but always find their way into danger. They usually also find their way into the arms of a willing woman.

German Expressionism

"Expressionism" is a theory of theatric direction in which subjective feeling, rather than objective observation, is represented symbolically in form (shape, colour, contrast) and subject matter. Expressionism is a symbolic representation of the director's state of mind, rather than of events, places, or things. In Germany, it developed into an anguished style which tended to explore the darker sides of the psyche.

German expressionist films were prevalent in the 1920’s. These films were united by highly stylized visuals, strange asymmetrical camera angles, atmospheric lighting, non diegetic sounds and harsh contrasts between dark and light. Shadows and silhouettes were an important feature of expressionism, to the extent that they were actually painted on to the sets in some movies.

Many directors were able to use these techniques in their own style, creating tension, fear, excitement and intense feelings in the audience throughout the movie or specific scenes.

Its purpose was to deepen the audience’s interaction with the film, combining technology and imaginative filming techniques in order to intensify the illusion of reality. The Expressionists supplanted reality with myth and fantasy in order to liberate visual perception from the other senses.

The Expressionists practically reinvented the look of film with innovative and unusual editing rhythms (it was very hard to follow the plot due to this fact), respectively distorted sets, exaggerated gestures, weird or different camera angles and the famous “camera unchained” (a new technique that allowed the camera to move within the scene, vastly increasing the accessibility of the character’s subjective point of view). The Expressionists developed new habits of seeing, new ways to interpret the way people relate to social living and self-identification.

The themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light (it was mainly dark during the whole film), and shadow to enhance the mood of a film. Two genres that were especially influenced by Expressionism were the horror film and film noir.

Amongst the best remembered are films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weiner, 1920), Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922), Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) and Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927).

In conclusion, no other film genre of the 1920's was as innovative and influential as German Expressionism. It opened the world's eyes to the possibilities of filmmaking, and where an audience could be taken. It was very much a product of its time, and so flourished and declined in that 10 year period of social and economic change. But its influence lives on in terms of production aesthetics and audience-driven production decisions. Simply put, modern films would not be the same if it was not for the ground breaking achievement of German Expressionist cinema.