Bergman's Lord of the Ring

I just saw on IMDb.com that The Seventh Seal is classified as Drama/Fantasy.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Yeah. And?

So should Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Being John Malkovich, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day and Harvey be considered fantasies. Think about what the word means. It's not strictly about elves and dragons and magic spells.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

That told you Pidd

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Pumpkins scream in the DEAD of night!

Ah, Holden... I've been expecting you.

Well, if we're supposed to take the genre labels literally then Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a Western, Deep Blue Sea a Sci-Fi, Ken Park an Adult and Hotel Rwanda a Crime. But of course none of them are labelled as such by IMDb.com. And why the hell is Wild Strawberries, perhaps Bergman's most surrealistic effort, not labelled Fantasy? And to be really picky, why isn't The Seventh Seal labelled Comedy? The squire Jöns is cracking jokes all the way through the film. Seriously, the film contains a large portion of dark comedy (right, Woody?), but Fantasy...

The genre of Fantasy is about just that: elves, dragons and magic spells. The use of symbolism alone, no matter how imaginative it may be, does not make The Seventh Seal a Fantasy film.

As you understand the "genre", yes, fantasy means Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. But they were making films they called "fantasies" even before Tolkien had published his books, much less Pete Jackson had made the movies. It's a Wonderful Life is a fantasy. I you want to narrow the term to just mean swords and sorcery, fine, but that's not the way they were using it. Which must have been obvious to you before you even made this thread.

As for what the IMDb in particular labels this or that...who gives a *****? But in the broader sense of the term that was with us before Star Wars, yes, all the movies I listed are fantasies.

Yes, of course I understood why IMDb.com labels The Seventh Seal a Fantasy. Mr. Death comes visiting and as most people believe, death is not really a guy, and certainly not someone you play Chess with. But there is a difference between making a Fantasy film and a film about a fantasy. If I understand you correctly, if the film was made exactly the way it originally was but Death was instead called Mr. Johnson, then the film would not be a Fantasy anymore?

This was the top hit when searching google for some kind of definition of what the genre is. And, sure, in one place it says that "Further blurring the definition, some suggest there is a distinction between 'Fantasy' proper as a genre, and 'the fantastic', the latter being a fantasy-like element in other fiction" so I guess there is room for some debate. But not on The Seventh Seal, imo.

I wouldn't know about It's a Wonderful Life becaue I haven't seen it (I know, I know.. shame on me...), but if you say it is Fantasy then it might be so. However, I would prefer to keep the discussion about whehter or not The Seventh Seal is a Fantasy or not. That is what this thread is about.. and this time I should know since I was the one making it.

I wouldn't say that IMDb's label upset me but it did puzzle me quite a bit. And you obviously give enough ***** to defend their labeling.

Were the films you listed branded Fantasy films when they were released?

Just to add to the discussion:

What about genres that overlap? Let's say you've got a film that's pretty straight-forward crime-drama, but then some fantasy element gets thrown in? What do you consider it then?

Solaris, the Steven Soderbergh film, takes place on a space station. But the science-fiction element is only really the setting. I'd say the film is more of a psychological thriller that just happens to take place on a space station. Yet, there are obviously fantasy elements thrown in. IMDB.com has it listed as "Drama/Romance/Sci-Fi," but I don't think that covers all the bases.

Point is, can we really even plug some films into genres anymore? I mean, anyone would be hard-pressed to place any of Charlie Kaufman's films into any specific genres. Sure, not all genre films have gone away, but the lines have been beginning to disappear for quite some long time, and it's always ever really been about interpretation anyway.

You are absolutely right, Sleezy. There are lots of films that are hard to label, and why should we label them anyway? The point is, to label a film the film at least has to contain some basic elements of the particular genre. And, the way I see it, The Seventh Seal does not contain any Fantasy elements.

What we've come to discuss here is the genre itself, what defines the genre Fantasy. I don't consider a film to be Fantasy just because it involves "a fantasy", do you follow me? The example you picked, Solaris, I wouldn't call Fantasy, although I'm buying the other three labels you mentioned. But I can understand somewhat that somebody else would label Solaris as Fantasy. The Seventh Seal, on the other hand, I can not.

One of my favorite movies.

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Chucky vs. Jason 2005

Couldn't believe how many oscars they won.

Oh dear....

Me thinks someone may have not read what this post is about.