Often dismissed as dated and histrionic, the classic melodrama genre, born in Hollywood in the shadow of the Second World War, is in fact a valuable moment in film history. Much of the existing literature on the classic Hollywood melodrama that examines the genre within its historical context focuses on the elements of these films that we might perceive, as a modern audience, to be dated, sexist, or problematic. While these analyses have their place, it seems to be commonly overlooked that many of these stories were written or co-written by women, for an audience of women. Being the ancestor from which much of modern cinema takes its cues, especially cinema intended for a predominantly female audience, I would argue that a reassessment of the melodrama in its capacity as “women’s cinema”, is long overdue.
Through a multidisciplinary approach incorporating historical analysis, gender studies and psychoanalysis, I will examine three pertinent examples of the classic melodrama genre which heavily involved women in their production: Now, Voyager (1942), The Seventh Veil (1946), and All That Heaven Allows (1955), alongside reference to others. I will place these films in their relevant historical context and analyse their content through a “feminine” lens to explore why these films appealed to a female audience.
The purpose of this presentation is to examine the plots and characters of these films through the lens of their being the creations of a woman's fantasy, and how that might be relevant to analysis of why these films appealed to audiences, and the ways in which they reflect the culture that produced them.