Film - The serial
Film - Film - The serial: While genres implicitly rely on an audience’s interest in and familiarity with earlier movies of a certain kind, the serial is a type of movie that explicitly requires an audience to return episode after episode. Also called the chapter-play or cliff-hanger, the serial flourished in the days of silent films, when moviegoing was a weekly habit. Perhaps the most famous were Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas (1913–14) and Judex (1916) in France and the American series of the same period with Pearl White, such as The Perils of Pauline. Old serials were revived from the 19...