Social Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the Fifties Essay

loving Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the FiftiesIn the early fifties 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 utilize to refer to the popular romances that depicted a virtuous individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressive and inequitable companionable circumstances (Schatz 222). Sirks films were commercially successful and boosted the c areers of stars like Lauren Bacall, Jane Wyman, and Rock Hudson, who was in sevensome of Sirks thirteen American films (Halliday 162-171). Although critics in the fifties called the films trivial and campy and discount them as tearjerkers or female weepies (Schatz 224), critics in the seventies re-examined Sirks work and positive an academic respect for the genre and declared that the films actually had subversive kindred to the dominant ideology (Klinger xii) . Douglas Sirks Magnificent Obsession (1954) and faux of Life (1959) are representative of the techniques melodramas used to address relevant fifties issues like class, gender, and race. iodin characteristic of melodrama is the lavishly artificial and visually stylized scenery (Schatz 234) which is exploited in Magnificent Obsession. Numerous scenes take place in abject convertibles, where the motion of the car is out of synch with the motion of the scenery. Whenever possible, rooms have macroscopical picture windows showing magnificent, but obviously fake outdoor landscapes. At one point a scene on the lakeshore cuts instanter from a shot of Helen (Jane Wyman) sitting in front of a substantive horizon to a close-up of her sitting in front of a brilliantly c... ...ltural form (Klinger xii).Works citedAull, Felice. Magnificent Obsession. http//mchipO0.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-me...cs/webfilms.magnificent.obses3-film-.htmlEllison, Ralph. Shadow and Act. Vintage external New York , 1953.FilmFrog Archives Lecture given at Sonoma State University (1995), Imitation of Life (1959). http//yorty.sonoma.edu80/filmfrog/archive/Imitation_of_Life.htmlHalliday, Jon. Sirk on Sirk Interviews With Jon Halliday. New York Viking, 1972.Imitation of Life. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Universal, 1959.Klinger, Barbara. Melodrama and meat History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk. Indianapolis Indiana University Press, 1994.Magnificent Obsession. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Universal, 1954.Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1981.