Could anyone provide a brief definition of "woman's melodrama" as opposed to
other types of melodramatic films in the 40s (and today), including film
noir?  I've been rereading E. Ann Kaplan's MOTHERHOOD AND REPRESENTATION:
THE MOTHER IN POPULAR CULTURE AND MELODRAMA.  But as a theatre historian,
it's difficult for me to understand why in film studies the term "melodrama"
is so often reserved for woman's films of the 40s.   Aren't Westerns and
gangster films, as well as films noir, also melodramas--with clear-cut good
and evil characters, and with the triumphant violence of the hero over the
villain justified in the happy ending?

Is that still the paradigm for woman's (or maternal) melodramas, although
such films speak from a woman's position rather than a man's?

Mark

> ----------
Elizabeth Haas wrote:

> What's also interesting about that phenomenon (ff's as having no past)is
> how it differs from the woman's melodrama of that time (40s Hollywood).
> Whereas noir casts its femme fatale characters as either bad-to-the-bone
> from the beginning, featuring flashbacks that only reaffirm the ff's
> present-time venial sexuality (e.g. FILE ON THELMA JORDAN), the melodramas
> feature references to the past or flashbacks that explain a particular
> sexual reluctance in the present timeline.
>

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