History of the crime genre

The first truly popular crime fiction series was sherlock Holmes which is a detective series about 2 partners who solve the mystery behind the crimes commited. The Sherlock Holmes books were created around victorian times by scotsman Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes was a instant success when the first books about it were published and viewed to the public. The series introduced most of the public into the crime genre for the first time and the public wanted more of it because they found it interesting and thrilling.

During the 1920s the film industry boomed with many different genres of films being created and shown the live audiences in the cinema. The one crime / gangster film that stood out most during this time period was Josef von Sternberg's gangland melodrama underworld. It received the first oscar for original screenplay due to some very iconic scenes within the film. This film developed the crime genre to audiences showing how thrilling and scary they can really be.


Before 1972 the crime genre was slowly developing and to some audiences becoming somewhat boring but when Mario Puzo created the godfather in 1972 it amazed audiences worldwide. The godfather became a hit worldwide to millions of people due to the fantastic story and cinematography. The godfather had a massive influence on the crime genre adding and emphasising many new and existing conventions like bombs, death, deception ect.

Another film which had a heavy influence on the crime genre is scarface starring al Pacino who had already previously starred in the godfather creating his name. Scarface focused more extremely large scale crime and corruption that is happening without normal citizens even knowing about it. It contained large amounts of violence and action unlike another crime films before.

Today crime films are very popular among audiences with films like the dark knight and the modern sherlock Holmes film with Robert Downey jr. These films I have selected show the development of the crime genre during that time period. Crime films have many sub genres as well like gangster and detective and crime itself goes along well with action adventure eg the dark knight.