Background
Melodrama: basic characteristics
1950s Melodrama: the genre comes of age
Melodrama: Sirk
1.irony
2. Sirk's mise-en-scene: how it's manifested
5. choreography as a direct expression of char
All That Heaven Allows
1. Legibility: everyone can read it
2. Expressiveness: given to exaggeration:
everything brought into the open
3. Simplification of roles:
good and evil clearly delineated
4. Strong identification:
emotions alive w/high suffering
5. Devaluation of language:
language less important than mise-en-scene
Thomas Schatz: melodrama: "applied to popular romances that 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"
chars at mercy of social conventions (romantic comedy: chars scoff at proriety)
resignation of principals to constricture of social & familial tradition
(romantic comedy: lovers integrated into self-sufficient unit distinct from social world)
family as narrative focus:
clearest representation of America's patriarchal & bourgeois order
by mid-1950s: men returned from wars to alienating bureaucratic jobs
women caught bet. labor market & need to return home to raise families
families uprooted: greater mobility, educational opportunities:
beginning of disintegration of nuclear family
cultural factors coalesced: family melodrama began to take shape
family unit: provided locus for genre's chars & social world because:
1. central unit w/individual roles (father, mother, son, daughter, etc) that
carry large social significance
2. bound to its community by social class (income, type of home, etc.)
ideally, family unit is self-contained society: but this is undercut by family's
status w/i highly structured socio-economic world:
family roles that seem autnomous:
really determined by larger social community
American small town: acute class consciousness, gossip,
judgment by appearances, reactionary commitment to fading values
represents extended but perverted family: human elements have either:
solidified into repressive social conventions or disappeared
upheaval & change: but people acting like everything okay
emergence of family melodrama in 1950s:
films no longer just used familial conflicts to enhance external complication (war, crime, etc.)
instead, focused on family itself as basis for conflict
paradox emerged from this shift:
family crisis was dominant narrative conflict: but:
resolution had to be found w/i dominant social structure (family)
melodrama can function in 2 ways:
1. for patriarchal ends by bringing about narrative resolution of its contradictions
2. for women by offering satisfaction of recognition of these contradictions, which are usually suppressed
melodramas: successful: capacity to connect emotionally
also: socially self-conscious, covertly "anti-American":
moreso than anything else produced by H'wood
possible for melodrama:
1.to give access to truths about human existence denied to more culturally respectable forms
2. to be ideologically subversive
"weepies": critique of ideology hidden by escapist fare
popularity of melodramas plus surface-level simplicity:
discouraged looking deeper
but: w/certain directors: Minnelli, Ray, Sirk:
genre assumes ironic, ambiguous perspective
both celebrating and questioning basic values/attitudes of mass audience
1950s melodramas: elicit wide range of emotional/intellectual responses:
contemporary reviews:misunderstood films as confusion of fantasy/reality
there is confusion, but (with Sirk, Ray, etc.) chars, not director confused:
"Sirk's popularity seems closely related to his capacity to flesh out the unnatural aspects of America's social reality, to articulate cinematically how that reality is itself a collective cultural fantasy."
manipulation of melodramatic form:
in filmmaking, camera & cutting take place of language:
"writing with the camera":
"angles are a director's thoughts, lighting his philosophy"
Bending the material:
distancing: as in didactic theater:
even tho Sirk's audience implicated in action on screen
(evidenced by abundant tears or self-protective laughter):
distance still exists in film itself
combination of circumstances or a result that is the opposite of what is or what might be expected:
it's ironic that the firehouse burned down
irony produced by externalization of feelings into decor, gestures, & events:
objectifies & distances emotions
Euripidean irony: deus ex machina: the god in the machine:
tacked-on happy ending makes the crowd happy,
but, to a few, it exposes what's underneath:
Sirk: "... you don't believe the happy end, and you're not supposed to."
camera angles: thoughts:
unusual angles: make viewer reassess situations
lighting: philosophy: non-natural lighting:
doesn't come from where real light source would
placement of objects & chars w/i frame:
screens: block chars visually:
represent blocked communication
mirrors: seem to represent reality, but don't;
instead, present an opposite, "backward" reality:
flattened and w/o depth:
used at moments of self-affirmation: irony
Sirk: "The mirror is the imitation of life. What is interesting about a mirror is that it does not show yourself as you are, it shows you your own opposite."
objects: significant use: patterns
significant to us because significant to chars: Wedgwood
chars placed in rooms heavily marked with their social situations
general flattening of the image:
preponderance of long & medium shots
b/g seems to have as much force (presence) as f/g:
f/g objects often placed to side: thus
larger spaces left in center of frame:
b/g seems to come forward, make itself felt:
all seems to fuse into single surface
but flatness doesn't preclude individual power of
specific objects or events:
sometimes: it seems like certain events cause flatness:
mirror shots: most common example:
presence of char & reflection both in frame:
reduces char to state of mere reflection
moving camera: expresses irony:
mobility of camera implicates viewer on emotional level:
yet camera distanced from chars: suggests detachment
Russell Metty: DP from 1952:
all important Sirk films (except TARNISHED ANGELS)
use of baroque color schemes: clothes, etc
delivery of lines: brings out hidden meanings
instead, Sirk most interested in ambiguous char:
one who is torn apart: split
ambiguous chars played out vs. more stable ones:
Cary Scott vs. Ron Kirby
set piece
sometimes literal:
most often: blindness of chars to their situations
purpose of manipulation/distortion of genre
Sirk's first big commercial success: MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: Hudson
ATHA: concocted to cash in on success of MO
same production company:
Hunter, Sirk, Metty, sets, costumes, art direction
same cast: Hudson, Wyman, Moorhead
same elements of story structure:
older woman, widowed, falling for younger man
"flabbiness" of story allowed Sirk greater latitude:
1. steeple shots:
divide film into acts
seasonal divisions:
New England: church structures society
starting point for WASP America
home of Thoreau & Emerson: ideals
both America's past & T & E's ideals: now unattainable
because society has lost touch w/its past:
WALDEN: small town society has lost touch w/its principles:
Cary's world: church steeple oversees town:
specific components of her world:
home: a mausoleum/crypt: preservation of something dead
children: not a new generation, rather:
perpetuators of tradition & repression
therefore, both conservative & tragic
resent Ron on class grounds
fight to mummify their mother
"friends"/country club: same as kids
Sara: mediates repression w/intelligence:
she's worse than the rest
everyone has ideological stake in keeping Cary a widow
Cary is trapped by them all
steeples: represent overview of tradition & repression
contrasted w/Ron's world: sketched w/ease & simplicity
1st scene: Sirk est. 2 basic themes:
loneliness & repression
from then on: Ron tries to draw Cary out regarding:
both her bourgeois world & prejudices: education
2. party sequences:
3 of them: film built around them: they're centerpieces:
1. Cary & Harvey at country club
2. Cary & Ron at Mick & Alida's
3. Cary & Ron at Sara's
must be in this order:
Mick & Alida's party in between:
not just for narrative reasons:
we must see country club first: the norm Cary's coming from
we must see Ron at Mick & Alida's before we see him at Sara's
parties: introductions, music, dancing, chatter:
Cary's world: Ron's world:
class structure ethnic difference
city (suburbs) nature
non-acceptance acceptance
no meaningful shared experience a shared past
rituals: talking w/kids, martinis, etc. spontaneity
cocktails before:
Cary's world: Ron's world:
the Scott special (serious) the Anderson special (parody)
quite prevalent:
sequence inside followed by sequence outside:
structurally supports crux of narrative:
Cary's vacillation bet. Ron & world she lives in
Ron: not seen inside till we see him in greenhouse:
bringing outside (nature) inside
image of tame deer: important: bridges gap bet. worlds
mill: large window: used to combine indoor/outdoor idea:
scene of their heavy decisions
Xmas carolers: Cary pinned behind window:
seen from outside: only from outside can we see she's trapped