Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mohammad Ali Safoora ¹
• Basir Salim Alaqeband ²
• Amir Hassan Nedai ¹

¹ Department of Cinema and Animation of Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

² Department of cinema and animation of Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Samurai genre, as one of most important parts of Japanese cinema history, had a significant role, in its seven decades of life, in emerging artistic threads in Japanese cinema, binging about a relative economical constancy for this cinema, and attracting attentions around the world to this cinema. Since genre studies in cinema mostly have been concentrated on Hollywood, especially on its studio system period, other cinemas, including valuable genres like Samurai genre in Japan on which great filmmakers from Mizoguchi and Kurosawa to Kobayashi and Oshima made films usually were neglected. This article applies Semantic/Syntactic approach of Rick Altman in genre theory, which regarded by genre theory experts most authentic theory for explaining cinema genres, into Samurai genre. So we will analyze this genre through the approach in two semantic and the syntactic sections by a descriptive/analytic method, and finally will provide a general vision of the class of this genre.

Keywords

• Genre
• Samurai Genre
• Japanese Cinema
• Chambara
• Semantic/Syntactic approach
• Rick Altman