In film studies and criticism, melodrama may variously refer to a genre, mode, style or sensibility characterized by its emphasis on intense and exaggerated emotions and heightened dramatic situations.^[1] There is no fixed definition of the term and it may be used to refer to a wide and diverse range of films of other genres including romantic dramas, historical dramas, psychological thrillers or crime thrillers, among others.^[2] Although it has been present in cinema since its inception, melodrama was not recognized as a distinct film genre until the 1970s and 1980s when critics and scholars identified its formal and thematic characteristics.^[3][4]

Unlike industry-defined genres, such as Westerns, melodrama was defined retrospectively, much like film noir.^[5] Its recognition as a genre stemmed from a critical reevaluation of Douglas Sirk's films (considered the greatest exponent of melodrama), particularly his 1950s works alongside those of Vincente Minnelli, which shaped the idea of the Hollywood "family melodrama".^[6] This genre centers on middle-class family conflicts, often generational, within contexts of social mobility and emotional trauma.^[7]

Melodrama has since been a key focus for discussions on gender, sexuality, and cultural reinterpretation.^[8] While traditionally associated with female audiences (with some scholars equating it with the category of "woman's films"),^[3] melodramas have garnered particular interest among gay men, largely due to their unintended camp elements.^[9][10] Camp, a subversive aesthetic that revels in exaggeration and artifice, had already drawn gay audiences to Sirk's films as works of camp before their academic rediscovery in the 1970s.^[9][10]

Although melodrama can be found in cinema since its beginnings, it was not identified as a particular genre by film scholars—with its own formal and thematic features—until the 1970s and 1980s.^[3] Interest in melodrama by film historians, critics and theorists emerged in the early 1970s, at a time when new methodological approaches within film studies were being adopted, particularly neo-Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism.^[3][4] In other words, the film genre became a focal point of academic interest in a context where ideology, gender and psychoanalysis were the most debated issues within film studies,^[3] which moved away from the auteur and mise-en-scène approaches of the 1960s.^[11] Thus, unlike other film genres, the notion of melodrama as a specific genre was not born out of the industry itself, but by critics and historians.^[3] This makes melodrama a comparable case to film noir, a term that is now widely recognised as a well-defined genre, but which was unknown during the 1940s, the period when most films included in that category were being made and shown.^[5] Like melodrama, film noir was identified and defined as a genre by film critics long after the films themselves had been made, though they differ in that the term "melodrama" was widely used within American film industry and journalism prior to its adoption by critics and historians.^[5] In fact, the term melodrama was used by American film companies with a very different meaning than the one it has since the 1970s, as it was used to refer to "action thrillers with fast-paced narratives, episodic story-lines featuring violence, suspense and death-defying stunts."^[5] As noted by scholars John Mercer and Martin Shingler:

Ironically, what Film Studies has come to regard as "melodrama" since 1970 are films with more words than action, inactive male protagonists, active and even domineering female characters, and anything but clear-cut and easily identifiable villains. In other words, the conception of "melodrama" arrived at by film scholars after 1970 is almost diametrically opposed to the conception of "melodrama" that circulated in the American film industry trade press in an earlier period. It is, however, the Film Studies' version of "melodrama" that is now in general circulation, having been adopted by Hollywood filmmakers, reviewers and journalists since the 1970s. Meanwhile, those films once described as "melodrama" by various sections of the film industry have come to be re-assigned under headings such as "film noir", the "western", "suspense thriller" and "horror movie."^[5]

The recognition of melodrama as a genre arose from a critical reappraisal of the work of Douglas Sirk, which in turn was spearheaded by an interview the retired director gave to historian Jon Halliday in 1971.^[12][10] Sirk's analysis of his films gave rise to a broader debate among critics about the representation of society in 1950s Hollywood, and the term melodrama evolved into a "broad category of cinema, one that often deals with highly-charged emotional issues, characterised by an extravagantly dramatic register and frequently by an overtly emotional mode of address."^[12] Melodrama does not refer to a single film form, but it is rather an umbrella term that hybridises several film cycles and sub-genres, including romantic dramas, costume dramas, psychological thrillers, gothic films, domestic dramas, juvenile delinquency films and crime films, among others.^[3] Some scholars have equated melodrama with the category of "woman's films", while others have used the term to refer to specific sub-genres, such as "family melodrama" or "maternal melodrama".^[3] As a result, there are several different and often contradictory definitions for melodrama as a genre.^[12] The "melodrama debate" that began in the 1970s has become one of the most complex within film studies, as it "engages with almost all of the key theoretical ideas within the discipline, from questions of genre and authorship, to issues surrounding representation, aesthetics and the ideological function of cinema."^[12] In the strictest sense, melodrama is defined as a "narrative with musical accompaniment to mark or punctuate the emotional effects", coming from the Greek words mélos (music) and dráma.^[13][14] In a broader sense, several film scholars have traced the historical origins of film melodrama in the theatrical genre of the same name,^[15] which enjoyed great popularity during the Victorian era.^[16]

Several of the first film scholars to focus on melodrama during the 1970s sought to narrow their field of analysis to a small, cohesive group of films, mainly 1950s American films directed by Sirk and Vincente Minnelli.^[6] This allowed a "more coherent field of investigation, a more distinctive canon of films with much greater consistency in terms of visual style, thematic content, performance and ideology."^[6] From these studies—especially the pioneering work of Thomas Elsaesser (1972)—emerged the notion of the Hollywood "family melodrama" genre, which was taken as the "ultimate form of film melodrama", as other scholars "assumed that his comments regarding [this genre] were applicable to Hollywood melodrama more generally."^[6] Some of the most notable scholars to adopt this approach were Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (1977), Laura Mulvey (1977–78) and Chuck Kleinhans (1978).^[6] By the 1980s, there was consensus on the recognition of family melodrama as a genre, as evidenced by its inclusion in Thomas Schatz's comprehensive book Hollywood Genres (1981), in which it had the same generic status as the Western and the gangster film.^[6] Schatz's work—a consolidation of the previous scholarship of the 1970s—cemented some general perspectives on the genre, such as its basic model and the recognition of Sirk as the major exponent of the style.^[6] In this basic model, the genre focuses on the conflicts and tensions (usually generational) of the middle-class family, often within a context of upward social mobility and with an emphasis on personal emotional trauma.^[7] The model is also characterised by a central protagonist (usually the victim of the drama) with a high degree of audience identification, an emphasis on the direct depiction of psychological issues and a tendency for happy endings.^[7]

Since the 1980s, several scholars have opted to conceive melodrama as something other than a genre, like a style, a mode of expression or a "sensibility".^[17] During the 1990s, the film studies' established account of the melodrama film genre was reassessed, mainly through the work of leading film scholars Steve Neale and Rick Altman.^[18] In a 1993 article, Neale questioned virtually all the notions that had been established around the genre, pointing out the radical difference in the use of the term between post-1970s film scholars and the 1940s–1950s film industry that produced those films.^[18] His investigation was published in a context of renewal within film studies in the 1990s, which moved away from the theoretical analysis of film-texts in favour of an understanding of the films' historical reception by audiences and specialized writers.^[18] Neale's article was highly polemical and led to a serious reassessment of the genre within film studies, which revived previously stagnant discussions.^[15] Among those who defended the established film studies' account of melodrama was Altman, who responded directly to several of Neale's claims in a 1998 essay.^[15] Altman proposed a new model for the development of film genres named "genrification",^[19] arguing that previous generations of scholars mistakenly focused on genres as fixed classifications, when in fact they are evolving categories that may be redifined at any time.^[20] Altman's contribution allowed different historical definitions of "melodrama" to coexist and scholars to adopt the one that is most convenient for their research.^[20]

Melodrama as a specifically cinematic mode has its antecedents in certain literary and theatrical forms from which screenwriters and directors borrowed their models.^[21] As noted by Elsaesser, the "media and literary forms which have habitually embodied melodramatic situations have changed considerably in the course of history, and, further, they differ from country to country".^[21] For example, in the United Kingdom, melodramatic motifs have mainly appeared in novels and Gothic literature, while Victorian theater saw an "unprecedented vogue" for the melodramas of Robert Buchanan and George Robert Sims in the 1880s and 1890s.^[21] In France, melodramatic antecedents can be found in costume drama and the historical novel; in Germany, in "high" drama and the ballad, as well as more popular forms like Moritat ("street songs"); while in Italy, melodramatic situations were more developed in opera than in novels.^[21] Elsaesser wrote that the origin of melodrama can be traced to two distinct currents. One of them leads to forms of oral narrative and drama like medieval morality plays, gestes, fairy tales and folk-songs, as well as their revival by Romantic authors such as Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine and Victor Hugo, which "has its low-brow echo in barrel-organ songs, music-hall drama, and what in Germany is known as Bänkellied".^[21] According to Elsaesser: "The characteristic features for our present purposes in this tradition are not so much the emotional shock-tactics and the blatant playing on the audience's known sympathies and antipathies, but rather the non-psychological conception of the dramatis personae, who figure less as autonomous individuals than to transmit the action and link the various locales within a total constellation."^[21]

If the dictionary definition of melodrama is taken into consideration (that is, a "dramatic narrative in which musical accompaniment marks the emotional effects"), all silent film drama qualifies as "melodramatic", as it needed the accompaniment of a piano for punctuation.^[22] To compensate for the "expressiveness, range of inflection and tonality, rhythmic emphasis and tension normally present in the spoken word", silent film directors had to develop an "extremely subtle and yet precise formal language" that involved cinematography, staging, acting and editing.^[22]

D. W. Griffith has been described as the "master of the silent melodrama", as he established its stylistic features in films like Hearts of the World (1918), Broken Blossoms (1919), True Heart Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922), in which the "sociosexual trials and tribulations of the sisters [Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish] et al. were communicated in theatrical pantomime."^[23] Griffith employed various cinematic techniques to highlight the characters' "virtuous suffering": extended camera shots, a measured storytelling pace, repeated close-ups of the distressed heroine (often with eyes turned upwards), and a solemn musical accompaniment.^[23]

Melodrama has long been a focal point for film scholars due to its ability to spark discussions on gender and sexuality within cinematic texts.^[8] Since the mid-1980s, sexuality has become a significant topic in film studies, largely due to contributions from gay and lesbian scholars and the rise of queer theory and studies, which have highlighted questions regarding gay spectatorship and sensibility in relation to melodrama.^[8] Some writers have considered the genre to be "cinema made for and by gay men."^[12] Despite the commonly assumed female demographic associated with woman's films, the "most conspicuous group who have found the 1950s family melodrama of particular interest are gay men", mainly because of the films' unintentional camp content.^[9] Although its definition is complex, camp can be identified as a subversive approach to reinterpreting and producing cultural products that delights in the exaggerated and the artificial.^[9] Before their 1970s reappraisal by film scholars, Sirk's films were already subject to gay following as camp works.^[9][10] In addition to Sirk's, several works by Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, George Cukor, Billy Wilder and Joseph Losey acquired cult status in gay male culture because of the "very excessiveness, extreme emotionality, mannered performances, style and very direct sentimental form of address that these films demonstrate."^[9] Several features of the family melodrama, later emphasized by film theorists as integral to the subversive and progressive essence of the genre, were precisely the attributes that gay men found humorous.^[9]

• List of melodrama films
• Marxist film theory
• Psychoanalytic film theory