What Was Melodrama Film Really?
Melodrama film conjures up imagery in the mind’s eye of old films with ‘obvious’ messages and motifs. Archival film scholar Stephen Neale noted that melodrama in 1950s and 1960s film studies criticism was often used as “a pejorative term . . . [it] was opposed, or counterposed, to ‘realism’ . . .” [9] Critics contended that melodrama exalted “verisimilitude, rather than realism,” and that due to its moulding by 19th century popular theatrical productions, “consistent associates were with pathos, romance, domesticity, the familial, and the “feminine” in the woman’s films.” [10] When Neale examined trade publications and press reviews, a different picture emerged of how the American trade press utilised the term. He argued that the “occurrence of terms or phrases like “romantic melodrama” or “domestic melodrama” in the trade press is in fact relatively rare,” [11] and it was also the exception within woman’s films. [12] Instead, the term “melodrama” was used in war, adventure, thriller,
