Film Melodrama

"Abstract:
This paper argues that Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life can be read as a post-religious film that offers its audience an experience of the “beyond” of the non-cinematic real. In order to make this argument, the paper employs Schleiermacher’s concept of religious experience as the beyond of human existence, experienced in moments of openness to the infinite-divine otherwise blocked in the natural state of finite human being. In western culture, cinematic experience is enclosed within the apparatus of melodrama, serving a quasi-religious function by offering audiences an amelioration of human existence in a world from which God has withdrawn. Hollywood melodrama subjectifies the audiences’ belief in the moral good within the mythic presentation of a world defined by ideals of historical progress linked to the power of industrialised capitalism and the nation state. The cinematic real is simply this reality presented as an experience of an ameliorated state of being unfolding in the film melodrama itself. Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life breaks with the apparatus of melodrama, and opens into the non-cinematic-real – the nothing of the cinematic world opened up by the film breaching its own framework. My reading will show how The Tree of Life presents human life as an evolved way of being blocked in a masculinised mode in mid-twentieth century America. The film releases this blocked way of being through the unwilling of the will of masculinised power, shown in visions of nature as the “beyond” of the cinematic real. These visions of nature, appearing through cracks in the film frame, enable the feminine way of being, otherwise blocked by the masculine will to power, to lead the way into the beyond of the non-cinematic real.

Key terms: Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life, post-religious film, Schleiermacher, film melodrama.

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Three different directors working at different moments in film history shoot three movies loosely based on the same story: Douglas Sirk’s All that heavern allows, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear eats the soul and Todd Haynes’s Far from heaven deal with the same basic theme - how individual freedom is repressed by social conventions and overt discrimination - although treated differently: Sirk makes emotions "overflow" into the surrounding environment, so that all elements of the mise-en-scène become "living replacements" of what happens to the characters; Fassbinder is more directly interested in social critique, but, through his "distancing effects" is able to make us fully and painfully aware of the characters' emotions; and Haynes brings the classical melodramatic elements into new life, infusing them with a sensibility that can very well resonate with contemporary audiences. Taken together, such films witness the persistence of melodrama through changing times and social contexts.

Toda biografía que tiene que ver con las relaciones humanas es un melodrama, y es precisamente por eso que creo que es justo hacer películas melodramáticas. La manera en que los americanos abordan ese género de películas transmite al espectador solo sentimientos, nada más. Yo quiero transmitir esos sentimientos al espectador, pero dándole también la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre ellos y analizar lo que siente".

Il melodramma è un genere? O possiamo rintracciare scene e sequenze melodrammatiche attraverso una varietà di generi? La difficoltà nel rispondere a queste domande non dovrebbe farci dimenticare che, nel suo periodo di massimo splendore, Hollywood ha prodotto una serie di film che possiamo facilmente identificare come melodrammi hollywoodiani "classici" - da Magnifica ossessione a A casa dopo l’uragano a Gioventù bruciata, registi come Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli e Nicholas Ray sono stati in grado, non solo di soddisfare le aspettative popolari contemporanee, ma anche, e soprattutto, di ritrarre con pathos e ironia le difficoltà della famiglia americana colta in uno dei suoi periodi di crisi più acuti e inquietanti.

Saggio introduttivo al libro-intervista di Jon Halliday con Douglas Sirk, "Lo specchio della vita" (Sirk on Sirk), edizione italiana a cura di Andrea Inzerillo, con uno scritto di Rainer Werner Fassbinder, postfazione di Goffredo Fofi, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2022

Chapter Two focuses on the Iwo Jima photograph but examines two demystifying and disenchanting adaptations of this influential image: Delbert Mann’s The Outsider (1961) and Edward Kienholz’s Portable War Memorial (1968). Both works – one a film and the other a multi-media installation – take the flag-raising as a point of departure for a subversive and critical look at American culture. I call this chapter “Melodrama Queered” because the Tony Curtis film is explicitly (as explicitly as was possible in 1961) about same-sex love, while the installation is about questioning normative American values in the Vietnam era and finding them dangerously inadequate to the task of keeping the country viable as a society. Both use melodrama to choreograph the emotional impact of their artwork, and both put the flag-raising in the service of an interrogation of mainstream values that I would call either literally or figuratively queer.

Why is Hollywood so uncomfortable with ambitious women?

In this video, I look at Aaron Sorkin's 2017 film Molly's Game and explore how female ambition in American cinema is often framed as an illness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1US-I4mKHzU

Filmography:
Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939)
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)
A Woman's Face (George Cukor, 1941)
Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)
Lady in the Dark (Mitchell Leisen, 1944)
The Dark Mirror (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Shock (Alfred L. Werker, 1946)
Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947)
Whirlpool (Otto Preminger, 1950)
All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)
Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
Baby Boom (Charles Shyer, 1987)
To Die For (Gus Van Sant, 1995)
Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996)
Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988)
Boiler Room (Ben Younger, 2000)
Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, 2004)
Morning Glory (Roger Michell, 2010)
The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
I Don't Know How She Does It (Douglas McGrath, 2011)
Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)
The Intern (Nancy Meyers, 2015)
The Big Short ( Adam McKay, 2015)
Molly's Game (Aaron Sorkin, 2017)
Float Like a Butterfly (Carmel Winters, 2018)

Is melodrama a genre? Or can we trace melodramatic scenes and sequences across a variety of genres? The difficulty in answering such questions should not make us forget that, in its heyday, Hollywood produced a number of movies that we can readily identify as “classical” Hollywood melodramas – from Magnificent obsession to Home from the hill to Rebel without a cause, directors such Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and Nicholas Ray were able, not only to meet contemporary popular expectations, but also, and more importantly, to portray with pathos and irony the plights of the American family caught in one of its most acute and disturbing critical periods.

An adaptation of Naguib Mahbouz’s 1949 novel, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, Arturo Ripstein, 1993) transposes the plot of a family melodrama from Cairo during the late thirties to Mexico City during the early nineties. Why is this Egyptian family melodrama, along with its surprising twists and turns, legible in a Mexican context, fifty years apart? This essay contends that, to address this question, one need not presuppose a persistent melodramatic imagination. What persists across these contexts is the dominance of a market economy, that is, an economy in which money acts not only as a medium of exchange or as a means to store and measure value, but also as the primary vehicle of social mobility. The Egyptian novel and the Mexican film dramatize how the market economy puts pressure on the family unit in two very different contexts. Rather than conceiving of melodrama as a modern form of imagination, I propose a conception of melodrama as a speculative activity in relation to the market economy. Drawing from the myriad senses of the term, I develop a conception of melodramatic speculation that stacks several activities: first, exchange of valuables (things and people) as a means to succeed or survive within the market economy; second, the mirroring of valuables as a means of turning them into images to be reflected upon; and third, reflection on the realm of exchange from a vantage point, considering its nature and guarding its limits.

A number of independent science fiction films released since the Great Recession feature relatively unexceptional protagonists in dystopian scenarios, thereby shifting the conventional focus of the genre from heroic action to small-scale personal and domestic dramas. This article argues that by juxtaposing issues of broader environmental degradation with more intimate private narratives of social reproduction, such films point to the limits of neoliberal austerity discourses that have become increasingly dominant since the 2008 economic crisis. Among these is "Advantageous" (dir./co-writ. Jennifer Phang, 2015), about the struggles of a middle-aged
single mother, Gwen Koh (Jacqueline Kim, also co-writ.), to raise her young
daughter Jules in a technocratic society characterized by rampant unemployment, feminist backlash, environmental ruin, and socioeconomic stratification. Using a blend of close textual analysis, genre study, and cultural critique, I argue that Phang’s film offers a timely vision of the ways in which mothers can be compelled to make drastic sacrifices for the upward mobility of their children. In combining the domestic tropes of maternal melodrama with the macroscopic concerns of dystopian
science fiction, "Advantageous" makes openings for an immanent critique of the strivings of virtuous neoliberal subjects in the face of eviscerated notions of social solidarity and collective purpose.

Tre diversi registi che lavorano in momenti diversi della storia del cinema girano tre film liberamente basati sulla stessa storia: Secondo amore di Douglas Sirk, La paura mangia l’anima di Rainer Werner Fassbinder e Lontano dal paradiso di Todd Haynes trattano lo stesso tema di base: come la libertà individuale sia repressa dalle convenzioni sociali e dalla discriminazione - sebbene trattato in modo diverso: Sirk fa "traboccare" le emozioni nell'ambiente circostante, in modo che tutti gli elementi della messa in scena diventino "specchi viventi" di ciò che accade ai personaggi; Fassbinder è più direttamente interessato alla critica sociale, ma, attraverso i suoi "effetti distanziatori" è in grado di renderci pienamente e dolorosamente consapevoli delle emozioni dei personaggi; e Haynes porta gli elementi melodrammatici classici a nuova vita, infondendoli con una sensibilità che incontra il pubblico contemporaneo. Presi insieme, questi film testimoniano la persistenza del melodramma attraverso differenti tempi e contesti sociali.