Sandy Camargo comments:



> The reasons for the confusion (and conflation) that you rightly notice is
> historical, I think. Here's the quick and dirty version, as I understand
> it: The first article to really talk about films dealing with so-called
> women's issues (i.e., relationships with men, where the love story was the
> main plot, not the subplot) was Thomas Elsaesser's "Tales of Sound and
> Fury." In that piece he referred to the "family melodrama," which would
> link it to and distinguish it from "western melodramas," "crime
> melodramas," etc. In the  subsequent, feminist-critical discussion of the
> form, it came to be called "the woman's film" or the "women's melodrama."
>         The other distinction would be that, unlike the heroes of westerns
> and other traditional melodramas, the female protagonist is most often
> unsuccessful in realising her goals. As soon as she is successful, the film
> is assigned to another genre.

I think that, in popular usage at least, the conflation and confusion
of terms occurs much earlier.  "Melodrama" itself, of course, has its
own long and complex history in theater (starting nearly two centuries
ago, when "melody" really was a part of the "drama"), and that larger
usage carried over into film as well.  (Sometimes in self-conscious
ways, as in the title of the last film John Dillinger would see before
being--ummm--melodramatically gunned down: MANHATTAN MELODRAMA.)

But in relation to academic discussion of the terms, Molly Haskell
and Andrea Walsh, among others, have noted that the term "woman's
picture" was in common use in the industry and among reviewers and
audiences for decades before, often conflated with such (usually
derogatory) terms as "tearjerker," "weepie" and the like.  Such films
were made and marketed with a female audience in mind--they were
"women's pictures" because they were both about and for women.

I expect that analysis of novels, short fiction in women's magazines,
and radio soap opera would also give some further context for the
interchangability of these terms (along with "soap opera" itself or its
derogatory dimunitve in VARIETY and elsewhere, "sudser").  Consider,
for example, how STELLA DALLAS was transformed from a popular (and
rather Natualistic) novel through two film versions to a long-running
radio serial that ultimately had such events as Stella taking on the
captain of a German U-boat!  In that case, "melodrama" as a descriptive
term seems to come full circle.

I think some qualification also has to be made about the protagonist
being "unsuccessful in realising her goals" as a definitive aspect of
the "woman's film."  More to the point, perhaps, is that her initial
goals are often displaced for new ones and/or tranferred to someone
else, such as a daughter.  That is certainly true of Stella herself,
who becomes content with giving up social mobility as her daughter
achieves it (while losing the daughter in turn).  It is also true of
Esther Blodgett/Vickie Lester in A STAR IS BORN, who reconciles the
stardom that she did not finally abandon after her husband's suicide
with the announcement, "Hello, everbody!  This is MRS. NORMAN MAINE!"


Don Larsson

----------------------
Donald Larsson
Minnesota State U, Mankato
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