There are many debates in Film Studies over what films count as melodramas. Film scholar Steve Neale’s essay, “Melodrama and the Woman’s film,” describes the paradigm shift that melodrama has experienced from the Silent era to the 70’s. On the other hand, Christine Gledhill’s essay, “Rethinking Genre” and “The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation,” suggest that melodrama is just a mode and, not, in fact, a genre. While Thomas Elsaesser’s essay “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on The Family Melodrama,” identifies the different types of melodrama. But what is a true form of the melodrama genre? At first, it might be difficult to understand why an animated film such as Curious George made my nephew ask me why he felt like crying when the monkey was separated from his zookeeper, and proceeded to ask why the film made him sad. What my little nephew didn’t know was that I also cried. Melodramatic films are those that make you cry: films that have an essence of verisimilitude, evoke pathos, and use music to accentuate the ‘drama.’ In this essay, I will take elements of Neale, Elsaesser, and Gledhill’s discourses on melodrama to support my definition. By the end of this essay, I will give a brief explanation on why the melodramatic film as the contemporary drama is important and universally understood.
In order for a film to be considered to be a melodrama it has to have a presence of verisimilitude. In other words, a melodramatic film has to mimic real life. According to Elsaesser’s essay, he says that, “even if the situations and sentiments defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally unlike anything in real life, the structure had a truth and a life of its own, which artists could make part of their material (37...
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...ealizes the loss Pita is going to have.
By adulthood, one is familiar with extreme sadness and true suffering. Most adults know the feeling of never being able to say you love someone because they have passed on. Or, losing your favorite toy. Even if you haven’t gone through such life changing events, we have all experienced the separation from our mother’s womb into the world. Our first cry is our first trauma that is implanted into our psyche. That’s why in Melodramatic films are solemnly those of great pathos that make the spectator cry because they familiarizes with the pain (even a five year old can understand), and there are cries of joy at the end for the purpose of catharsis which relieves of trauma of separation. (Why is crying therapeutic? How does it relieve this trauma? Does it cause us to confront the anxiety of separation you are referring to?)
Although distinctive melodramatic traditions developed in multiple countries, the Italian model is the most similar to that of the 1970's epic. While some melodramatic traditions evolved through novels or the theatre, "in Italy, ...
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
Run Lola Run, is a German film about a twenty-something woman (Lola) who has 20 minutes to find $100,000 or her love (Manni) will be killed. The search for the money is played through once with a fatal ending and one would think the movie was over but then it is shown again as if it had happened ten seconds later and changed everything. It is then played out one last time. After the first and second sequence, there is a red hued, narrative bridge. There are several purposes of those bridges that affect the movie as a whole. The film Run Lola Run can be analyzed by using the four elements of mise-en scene. Mise-en-scene refers to the aspects of film that overlap with the art of the theater. Mise-en-scene pertains to setting, lighting, costume, and acting style. For the purpose of this paper, I plan on comparing the setting, costume, lighting, and acting style in the first red hued, bridge to that of the robbery scene. Through this analysis, I plan to prove that the purpose of the narrative bridge in the film was not only to provide a segue from the first sequence to the second, but also to show a different side of personality within the main characters.
Barry, , Keith, and Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader III. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
Canadian filmmaker and cinephile, Guy Maddin once said, “I do feel a bit like Dracula in Winnipeg. I’m safe, but can travel abroad and suck up all sorts of ideas from other filmmakers… Then I can come back here and hoard these tropes and cinematic devices.” Here, Maddin addresses his filmmaking saying that he takes aspects from different film styles and appropriates them into his own work. In The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin uses a combination of French Surrealist filmmaking and classical American Hollywood cinema, specifically melodrama, to create his own style. In an article by William Beard, Steven Shaviro talks about Maddin’s filmmaking, and he links Surrealism and melodrama together saying, “Maddin’s films are driven by a tension between romantic excess [melodrama] on the one hand and absurdist humour [Surrealism] on the other.” In regards to The Saddest Music in the World, the relationship between Surrealism and melodrama is not one of tension, as Shaviro suggests, but one of cooperation. This paper will analyze two films by filmmakers Maddin was familiar with —Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the Surrealist side, and All That Heaven Allows (1955) by Douglas Sirk on the melodrama side—to showcase the important elements of each, concluding with an analysis of The Saddest Music in the World in conjunction with both film styles. Ultimately, it will be shown how Guy Maddin combines French Surrealist cinema and Hollywood melodrama in The Saddest Music in the World, to create his own unique film style.
The term melodrama has come to be applied to any play with romantic plot in which an author manipulates events to act on the emotions of the audience without regard for character development or logic (Microsoft Encarta). In order to classify as a Victorian melodrama, several key techniques must be used, including proximity and familiarity to the audience, deceit rather than vindictive malice, lack of character development and especially the role of social status.
Sumiko Higashi, author of numerous books, sociologically takes apart media films and newsreels that were available during the years of World War II. Her claim focuses around the title of “melodramas” in which she categorizes these types of propaganda films. Furthermore, she uses the works from different authors, such as Foucault, Michael O’Malley, and others, to argue the melodrama...
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Kracauer, Siegfried. “Basic Concepts,” from Theory of Film. In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Seventh Edition, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 147–58. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Film scholar and gender theorist Linda Williams begins her article “Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess,” with an anecdote about a dispute between herself and her son, regarding what is considered “gross,” (727) in films. It is this anecdote that invites her readers to understand the motivations and implications of films that fall under the category of “body” genre, namely, horror films, melodramas, (henceforth referred to as “weepies”) and pornography. Williams explains that, in regards to excess, the constant attempts at “determining where to draw the line,” (727) has inspired her and other theorists alike to question the inspirations, motivations, and implications of these “body genre” films. After her own research and consideration, Williams explains that she believes there is “value in thinking about the form, function, and system of seemingly gratuitous excesses in these three genres,” (728) and she will attempt to prove that these films are excessive on purpose, in order to inspire a collective physical effect on the audience that cannot be experienced when watching other genres.
Crying has always been recognized as a significant and frequent part of the therapeutic process (Blume-Marcovici, Stolberg, & Khademi, 2013; Nelson, 2012). During the therapy process, tears are often shed by both the client and the therapist. Because therapy tends to be focused on uncovering repressed emotions, working through traumatic experiences, processing grief, or adjusting to life’s circumstances, tears are often associated with the work that is done during therapy. Because mental health therapy tends to be emotion-focused, it is surprising to discover that little research has emphasized the importance of therapists’ crying during session. This leaves family science researchers wondering how often therapists cry in therapy and if their tears are helpful or harmful to their clients (“The Tears of a Therapist,” 2013). In a field that is so focused on emotions, more research needs to be done in order to better understand the frequency of therapists crying during therapy and how a therapist crying may affect clients. Understanding the frequency of therapists’ tears and the effects the tears have on clients may help future clinicians better indicate when and if it is appropriate for them to cry in front of their clients in a therapy session.
Phillips, Gene D. Conrad and Cinema: The Art of Adaptation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.