Social Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the Fifties Essay

Social Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the FiftiesIn the early 1950s the films of Douglas Sirk led the way in defining the emergent genre of the Hollywood melodrama. Melodrama strictly means the combination of music (melos) and drama, just the term is used to refer to the popular romances that depicted a stark(a) individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressing and inequitable social circumstances (Schatz 222). Sirks films were commercially successful and boosted the careers of stars like Lauren Bacall, Jane Wyman, and wave Hudson, who was in seven of Sirks thirteen American films (Halliday 162-171). Although critics in the mid-fifties called the films shadowy and campy and dismissed them as tearjerkers or female weepies (Schatz 224), critics in the mid-seventies re-examined Sirks work and developed an academic respect for the genre and declared that the films in reality had subversive relationship to the dominant ideology (Klinger xii ). Douglas Sirks Magnificent Obsession (1954) and fictitious 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 conventionalised scenery (Schatz 234) which is exploited in Magnificent Obsession. Numerous scenes take show up in moving convertibles, where the motion of the car is out of synch with the motion of the scenery. Whenever possible, inhabit have large picture windows showing magnificent, but obviously malingerer outdoor landscapes. At one point a scene on the lakeshore cuts directly from a shot of Helen (Jane Wyman) sitting in count of a real horizon to a close-up of her sitting in depend of a brightly 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. rear and Act. Vintage International current 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 Meaning 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 apartment System. Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1981.