Magnificent Obsession: The Melodrama Hollywood melodramas, also known as “women’s films” or “weepies”, enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1940s and 50s due in no small part to the presence of luminous stars, such as Joan Fontaine, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford, and the skilled direction of iconic filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Max Ophüls, and Douglas Sirk. Of course, it didn’t hurt that in such films these leading ladies were both prone to the mundane frustrations of middle-class domesticity and subjected to fantastic struggles with dangerous men, psychiatric maladies, and deadly female competition. These films were highly stylized as well, as directors augmented the characters’ plights with chilling suspense, textured cinematography, and rich Technicolor. But these pictures are more than soapy, big-screen entertainment. As the World War II years gave way to the postwar era, changes in American society—and women’s roles in it—were roiling the culture. The melodrama of this time is a female counter, of sorts, to film noir, and it can be just as cynical and dark.
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