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1. History and Conventions of a
Biopic Genre
Angharad Wilkins

2. What is a Biopic?
A sub-genre of the drama or epic film genre. These films depict and dramatize
the life of an important historical personage (or group) from the past or present
era. Sometimes, historical biopics stretch the truth and tell a life story with
varying degrees of accuracy.
Big-screen biopics cross many genre types, such as:
-Western
-Crime;
- Music
-Religion
- War
- Art
- Science
And many more…

3. When did it begin?
Biopics have existed since the earliest days of silent cinema in films such as
French filmmaker Georges Melies' feature-length epic Jeanne D'Arc (1899) (and
Cecil B. DeMille's Joan the Woman (1916) with opera star Geraldine Farrar),
D.W. Griffith's religious epic Judith of Bethulia (1914), Abel Gance's innovative
six-hour-long epic Napoleon (1927), and director Lloyd Ingraham's Jesse James
(1927) with Fred Thomson as the western outlaw.

4. Conventions
Professor Rick Altman of the University of Iowa has written about the notion of
genre in his book ‘Film/Genre’ (1999). In his book, Altman seemingly disregards
the role of emotion within genre study by outlining that genre is fundamentally
divided into just two sectors, the “semantic” (iconographic elements) and the
“syntactic” (structural and symbolic elements). In accordance with Altman’s
philosophy, the ‘biopic’ does constitute its own genre. Although lacking in
consistent syntactic qualities, the biopic does however comply with numerous
semantic conventions of structure and incorporates devices which aid the
compression of time, such as montage, flashback, voiceover and the use of
varied film aesthetics which convey a sense of ‘truth’.

5. Structure
The biopic typically contains a simple and highly defined narrative arc. It is often
the story of an individual’s rise to fame, and then ultimately their demise.
‘Success comes at a price’ as Anderson says, ‘It accommodates itself as easily
to the cautionary tale as to the sweep of the inspirational fable’. (Anderson
1988: 332-3 cited in Neale 2000:64).

6. Controversy
Dennis Bingham, author of Whose lives are they anyway? (2010) states that the
biopic is “unfairly maligned as static, formulaic, unchanging and perhaps dying”
This again supports the case to suggest that the ‘biopic’ does indeed constitute
its own genre as it conforms to ‘formulaic’ principles. It is however curious to
note that if this statement is in fact true; why then is the biopic also recognised
as the most successful genre of all time, with the genre attracting more industry
awards than any other in existence? Biopics are commonly referred to as ‘Oscar
bait’. In modern times, films are most likely to receive Oscars nominations if
they are difficult for the average viewer to watch, "The
diseased/addicted/mentally impaired always get the Oscar" (The Hollywood
Rulebook, Vanity Fair, 2002).

7. Key Functions and Audience
According to the ‘Uses and Gratifications’ theory, devised by Blumler, Katz and
Gurevitch, aside from just entertainment, the biopic can be broken down under
the following divisions that provide a means of ‘Personal Identity’, ‘Integration’
and ‘Social Interaction’ for audience to:
- Find models of behavior.
- Gain insight into one's self.
- Gain insight into circumstances of others; social empathy.
- Identify with others and gain a sense of belonging

8. Ranking the 10 Greatest Biopics
1) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2) Schindler’s List (1993)
3) Raging Bull (1980)
4) Amadeus (1984)
5) Goodfellas (1990)
6) The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
7) Patton (1970)
8) Malcolm X (1992)
9) My Left Foot (1989)
10) The Elephant Man (1980)

9. References
http://boxcleverfilms.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/does-biopic-constitute-genre.html
http://www.filmsite.org/biopics.html
http://www.awardscircuit.com/2012/10/17/ranking-the-10-greatest-biopics/

10. References
http://boxcleverfilms.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/does-biopic-constitute-genre.html
http://www.filmsite.org/biopics.html
http://www.awardscircuit.com/2012/10/17/ranking-the-10-greatest-biopics/