Laura Mulvey states that the concept of ‘Hollywood Melodrama’ wasn’t an invention of Hollywood studios but instead emerged organically from an accumulated body of work. When analyzing film of any genre or era, including the present, the concept of hindsight as 20/20 vision should be strongly considered, but particularly when watching highly stylized films such as the melodrama, as they are often rich with message. Art is often responsive and sometimes reactive to the trends of its era (the Impressionist, Expressionist and Social Realism are three excellent examples) and the art of filmmaking is no different.
Arguably the studios have the power to distribute films to the general public but it’s the filmmaker, the auteur, who is best positioned to influence the movie-going audience. By optimizing the conventions of filmmaking (lighting, costuming, makeup, music, film stock, casting, directing, etc…) the filmmaker is able to send messages – both overtly and subtly – that generally comment on politics, philosophy or society, often suggest change and sometimes perpetuate myths.
This is evidenced by the films of Douglas Sirk, where his views on the Eisenhower Era predominate. Although astutely in tune with the attitudes and behaviors of the era, Sirk was not an advocate for the perpetuation of the lifestyle so lavishly portrayed in the films of the 1950’s, including his own. Sirk used film as a forum to make comment on the Technicolor Dreams being adopted by most Americans at that time. Sirk’s comment, that the mediocrity Americans were striving to ‘achieve’ would prove stifling or limiting and would eventually be their downfall, was in the foreground the storylines of his films and underscored by his use of the conventions of filmmaking.
Sirk’s films contain all the elements typical of the melodrama (themes, use of music, lighting, camera angles, etc…), however Sirk and his audience were more sophisticated than their earlier counterparts. Sirk inherited responsibility to build on the groundbreaking work (technically and directorially) laid forth by Griffith and others to maximize messages with the employment of camera angles and lighting. Also typical to the melodrama, Sirk’s characters are stereotypes (hero, heroine, villain, vamp). But Sirk takes latitude by more broadly casting his characters (Liberal Idealism as Villain) and by overlapping roles (both Convention and The Escape from Convention may simultaneously play the role of Hero).
Examples of Sirk’s advancement of the melodrama can be seen in his”All That Heaven Allows”. Beginning with story, Sirk has chosen one that is accessible to the 1950’s audience. If his audience doesn’t live the life of the characters in this story, they can certainly relate to it as this is the life that is being sold to them through advertising and other media, including film. But it’s Sirk’s treatment of the script as a director that him ownership and categorizes the film as a melodrama. Sirk employs the use of metaphor at virtually every turn. The construct is a film that is on one level an entertaining 89 minutes but on another (and perhaps this is where the benefit of hindsight enters) a complex analysis and commentary on the Eisenhower Era.
The casting of Rock Hudson as Ron Kirby, the love interest to Jane Wyman’s protagonist, Cary Scott, is of particular interest. Hudson’s life mirrored the melodrama itself, in which hysteria bubbles just under the surface until it reaches an explosive head. One can’t help but wonder if Sirk was aware of Hudson’s homosexuality and if this was just another jab at American society a lá “Women, the man you lust after isn’t even remotely interested in you!” No effort was made to diminish Hudson’s height. Instead, great effort was taken to light and shoot him so he’d appear even taller and stronger than he was in reality.
The use of color film stock and the great impact provided by the additional contrast that is implemented for example, when Cary opens the door from her monochromatic tomb of a home (all greys) to the brightly colored world awaiting her escape. While on the surface, the colorful world on the other side of the door is visually stunning, the astute viewer knows to take note and look for meaning beneath the surface.
Costuming is another avenue on which Sirk embarks to make a point. Cary, a widow, is almost always seen in confining grey apparel. Sirk uses the red dress Cary wears to the first cocktail party to signify that she is ready to move away from the social confines of widowhood. But the dramatic shift from grey to red is so quick that it serves to foreshadow that the character is going to make a change in her life that is equally as dramatic. Since the dress is red and red signifies warning or danger, the viewer is clued in that Cary’s change is going to be problematic. The red dress appears again at the end of the film but this time on Cary’s daughter, who has abandoned the liberal college scene for bourgeoisie conventionality. No doubt, Sirk is signaling us of his concern that the Technicolor Dreams being sought out by Americans are not soon to be abandoned.
While “All That Heaven Allows” contains numerous other examples of Sirk’s advancement of the melodrama, the three referenced above serve to support the assertion that it’s the filmmaker and not the studios who have defined the melodrama of the 1950’s. With this in mind, the careful film viewer will make attempts to look for opportunities to seek out metaphors and glean deeper meaning from all films, even those as seemingly benign as the melodrama.
References
“Mothering, Feminism and Repression: The Maternal in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film” by E. Ann Kaplan
“’Something Else Besides a Mother’: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama” by Linda Williams
“It Will be a Magnificent Obsession: The Melodrama’s Role in the Development of Contemporary Film Theory” by Laura Mulvey
“Notes on Sirk and Melodrama” by Laura Mulvey
“Rock Hudson’s Body” by Richard Meyer
“Tales of Sounds and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama” by Thomas Elsaesser
“Stella Dallas” (1937)
“All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
“Written on the Wind” (1956)