Social Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the Fifties
In the early 1950s the films of Douglas Sirk led the way in defining the emerging genre of the Hollywood melodrama. "Melodrama" strictly means the combination of music (melos) and drama, but the term is used to refer to the "popular romances that depicted a virtuous individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressive and inequitable social circumstances" (Schatz 222). Sirk's films were commercially successful and boosted the careers of stars like Lauren Bacall, Jane Wyman, and Rock Hudson, who was in seven of Sirk's thirteen American films (Halliday 162-171). Although critics in the fifties called the films "trivial" and "campy" and dismissed them as "tearjerkers" or "female weepies" (Schatz 224), critics in the seventies re-examined Sirk's work and developed an "academic respect for the genre" and declared that the films actually had "subversive relationship to the dominant ideology" (Klinger xii). Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Imitation of Life (1959) are representative of the techniques melodramas used to address relevant fifties issues like class, gender, and race.
One characteristic of melodrama is the "lavishly artificial and visually stylized scenery (Schatz 234) which is exploited in Magnificent Obsession. Numerous scenes take place in moving convertibles, where the motion of the car is out of synch with the motion of the scenery. Whenever possible, rooms have large picture windows showing magnificent, but obviously fake outdoor landscapes. At one point a scene on the lakeshore cuts directly from a shot of Helen (Jane Wyman) sitting in front of a real horizon to a close-up of her sitting in front of a brightly c...
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...ltural form" (Klinger xii).
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Imitation of Life. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Universal, 1959.
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Magnificent Obsession. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Universal, 1954.
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During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print.
I will begin my essay by looking closely at the narrative of Sunset Boulevard to see where and how the film represents the Hollywood Studio System. At the beginning of the film the audience is introduced to Joe Gillis, a script writer who is struggling to pay his rent as he in unable to sell his scripts to the ‘majors’ of Hollywood. The film follows Joe to ‘Paramount Pictures’ one of the major studios in Hollywood, which the film pays a large self reference to as the producers of Sunset Boulevard as well as representing the studio system.
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
This book has a lot of cool stuff in it I’ve never heard of both positive and negative about the film industry, but I was surprised most by how much film seeps into reality and the real world. On top of this, it made me realize what filmmakers do to save money in any way possible. The three topics that were most interesting to me were the Auteurs section, the German expressionism section, and finally the film industry’s ties with the military and government.
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Barsam, R. M., Monahan, D., & Gocsik, K. M. (2012). Looking at movies: an introduction to film (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co..
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (2005) Style and meaning : studies in the detailed analysis of film. Engalnd: Manchester University Press, pp 42-52.
Marked by a plot to attract the highlighted emotions of the audience, melodramatic films are derived from drama films. As we can see, “Melodrama” consists of “drama” and “melos” (music), literally meaning “plays combined with music.” The themes of dramas were exaggerated within melodramas, and the liberal use of music enhances their emotional conspiracies to a large extent.
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.
The filmmaking industry experienced a rapid growth and expansion during the first thirty years of its operation. The then unfamiliar experience quickly spread across the globe, attracting an ever growing audience in all the places it was...
Neale, Stephen. "Expectation and Verisimilitude". Excerpted from "Questions of Genre". Film Genre Reader II. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P. 1995. 159-183.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.