Cinematography for Directors: A Guide for Creative Collaboration by Jacqueline Frost

Author:Jacqueline Frost [Frost, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions
Published: 2009-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

Public Enemy

The Departed

The Melodrama

The melodrama has been around since D.W. Griffith started making films in the early 1900s. He was the king of the silent melodrama and captivated audiences with his engaging narratives Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920) starring Lillian Gish. In Griffith’s films Gish portrayed a suffering lead character, her pain revealed through close-ups of her gazing toward heaven with a somber musical accompaniment emphasizing the drama.

A traditional definition of the genre is indicated by the name; which combines those elements — music (melos) and drama — to tell a story that is heightened emotionally beyond realistic drama. The dramatic musical scores are used to emotionally manipulate the audience as the story unfolds on screen. The genre continued through the 1920s and 1930s with Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) and F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) standing out as notable contributions to the silent era melodrama.

Frequently material for the melodrama was taken from pulp fiction novels, such as the adaptation from the best-selling tearjerker novel of a doomed romance, Backstreet, written by Fannie Hurst. The story was told on screen three times, first in 1932, directed by John Stahl, with Irene Dunne and John Boles; again in 1941, directed by Robert Stevenson, with Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullivan; and finally in 1961, directed by David Miller, with Susan Hayward and John Gavin.

Put more formally, the storyline of melodramas often “depicted a virtuous individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressive and inequitable social circumstances, particularly those involving marriage, occupation and the nuclear family.”

(Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 222.)

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