In my review of Asako I & II that appears in this week’s Reader, I argue that the melodrama remains a genre with much to teach us. The heightened emotions we associate with melodramas speak to the feelings we all experience during moments of crisis and epiphany, while the blatant narrative contrivances of the genre can make us more cognizant of the arbitrary forces that shape our lives. The melodramatic tradition goes back hundreds of years, having a long legacy on stage before the movies began; the early cinema teems with melodramas, many of them adapted from popular stage plays.
Magnificent Obsession Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in Douglas Sirk’s 1954 version of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel about a playboy who becomes a doctor in order to restore the eyesight of a woman he’s carelessly blinded. Robert Taylor and Irene Dunne starred in the John M. Stahl original in 1935, and the difference between the two versions is the difference between a sincerely melodramatic sensibility (Stahl) and a coolly formal approach to otherwise unwieldy projects (Sirk).—Don Druker
