Melodrama Genres In Rebecca And Far From Heaven

Introduction 100 words In this investigating a film called The Dressmaker directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and a book called Jasper Jones written by Craig Silvey and with these two text will be comparing and contrasting the use of themes in the film and the book. Revenge in The Dressmaker happens when Tilly burned the town; in Jasper Jones Eliza burned her home. Then in Family Tilly and Molly has a rough start when tilly came back but turned out to be happy with each other, while in Jasper Jones Charlies mum and Charlie are happy at the start but went down here very quickly when Laura disappeared. The themes are revenge, death, and family.

Furthermore, Rebecca reflects the conventions of the romantic genre by showing that the heroine?s first impressions of the hero were incorrect. She had first viewed him as ?hard? and ?sardonic? due to his remarks at Mrs Van Hopper, ?He got up at once, pushing back his chair. ?Don?t let me keep you,? he said. ?Fashions change so quickly nowadays they may even have altered by the time you get upstairs.?? However, following her first breakfast with Maxim, she realises that she was wrong and says, ?I had ill-judged him, he was neither hard nor sardonic, he was already my friend of many years.? The first impression of Maxim only lasts over one coffee with Mrs Van Hopper however is fixed soon after when he sends the heroine a note which reads, ?Forgive me. I was very rude this afternoon.? It is evident that as soon as she receives this note, her opinions of the hero change. She also elaborates on her feelings the next morning when Maxim invites her

In Rebecca du Maurier appears to conform to the conventions of the romantic genre however, du Maurier has also subverted the genre of romance through her representation of the relationship between the narrator and Maxim and the structure of the novel. She has also incorporated of elements of the gothic genre and the psychological thriller.

These three brides represent the femme fatale, the fatal woman. The over sexualised women whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. These women serve as monstrous reminders of what happens if the boundaries of proper behaviour and traditional gender roles are crossed. These women, although beautiful, possess the wrong type of beauty, one of which brands them as evil, openly sexual and seductive women. Who, in addition lack the chaste passivity and fragility of the ideal Victorian lady, thus making them deserving of some form of punishment in order for them to be returned to their pure, innocent, albeit dead, human form.

Any movie can have a romantic plotline, consisting of a picturesque town, a lonely woman, and forbidden love, but only one can narrate societal hypocrisies and social stigmas while paying homage to a classic Hollywood melodrama directed by a German-expressionism-influenced director from the 1950s. Enter stage right, Far from Heaven. Directed by Todd Haynes, this film, set in the 1950s, tells the story of Cathy Whitaker, a suburban housewife who seems to have the perfect life—until it starts to fall apart, and she has to learn how to keep her husband’s homosexuality and her personal infatuation with her gardener, an African American man, from affecting her flawless image and place in society. This movie was heavily influenced by the midcentury melodrama All That Heaven Allows, directed by Douglas Sirk, as suggested by the somewhat similar plotlines, but their similarities are heavily apparent in the cinematography and mise-en-scène. What makes Far from Heaven unique from its predecessor, though, is how it uses modernized topics in its storyline in order to unveil the hypocrisy of society and the Whitakers’ dysfunctional relationship.

The novel “Rebecca” by Daphne Du Maurier is a gothic romance novel to say the least. It is a classic tale of mystery, romance and, suspense. Du Maurier tells the story of a nameless woman who becomes the second wife of Mr. Maxim De Winter. They live at Manderley along with the servants of the estate. The main character is faced with the fact the Maxim’s first wife Rebecca, is idolized into something of the perfect wife from the very beginning. However, as the reader soon finds out, Rebecca was anything from perfect. She only portrayed the image of perfection for those who were not her husband Maxim. Daphne Du Maurier’s use of an insecure female narrator shows the reader that this story could not have been told by a man.

In Desperately Seeking Susan and Rebecca the two "good" women are set up as immature heroine's looking to eventually grow up. Both women's journeys are consumed by another women's life. They are both set up as clumsy and dependent upon others in their everyday life. The two bad women are set up as independent, promiscuous, and free. The two films set up an opposite between what is considered normal femininity and abnormal femininity.

The issue of female persecution throughout many of Hitchcock’s films has been fiercely contested, none more so than the controversial issue of assault and the attempted rape of a woman. Views that Hitchcock represents the archetypal misogynist are supported, Modelski suggesting that his films invite “his audience to indulge their most sadistic fantasies against the female” (18). Through both the manipulation of sound and the use of language, none more so than in Blackmail and Frenzy, the idea of rape and violence does effectively silence and subdue not only the women in the films, but the also the women watching them (18).

In the 1950’s the melodrama genre came to age and there is no better example than Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows. The melodrama followed some basic characteristics which can be identified in the film. First and foremost the narrative of the melodrama focused on the family. All that Heaven Allows follows the narrative of the typical melodrama but at the same time also challenges the social conventions. While Sirk follows many of the key themes he does so in a more detached fashion. The protagonist Cary is bound to her community by her social class. Change was occurring in society and the melodrama displayed people’s restraint to this. In All that Heaven Allows Sirk began his focus on the female and her desires in contrast to the more conservative male focused melodrama. As with the melodrama the legibility of the story, displayed through the plot, is simple and easy to follow. “Our engagement with the story depends on our understanding of the pattern of change and stability, cause and effect, time and space” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008). The linear time flow of the film allows for it’s simple understanding. This is added to by the expressiveness of the melodrama, where everything is brought into the open and nothing is left unsaid. The expressiveness of the melodrama is also represented in the highly expressive mise-en-scene. Sirks use of colour, the human figure, camera work, lighting and music allow him to portray suppressed meaning and significance.

The picturesque siren is invariably familiar to most as a creature of myth and seductive danger. It is through the perspective of such a creature that Margaret Atwood showcases a cruelty that has stereotyped women into having methodical and sinister motives. The “Siren Song” is a rendition of such a type-casted woman who has become bored with tricking and killing men beyond count. In this interpretation, I will analyze “Siren Song” while focusing on the feministic ideology.

Living almost a century apart, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy each explore similar themes of love through strong female characters. While society strove to keep women’s value directly tied to their marital status, Austen and Hardy wrote the stories of characters who defied these expectations. Bathsheba Everdene of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd is a fiery young woman who inherits a farm, and Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is an educated woman who prides herself on speaking her mind regardless of the consequences. Both women are of marrying age, and both novels feature their romantic exploits. Besides their differing socio-economic and temporal settings, Bathsheba’s and Elizabeth’s behaviors indicate that they are facing similar feelings and conflicts when it comes to issues of love and marriage. Bathsheba goes to greater lengths to defy societal pressures than Elizabeth does, but Bathsheba’s circumstances warrant the effort. The real difference between these characters is the way in which they are written. One could not know how similar Bathsheba’s thoughts and feelings are to Elizabeth’s, because the reader rarely sees through Ms. Everdene’s eyes. Bathsheba Everdene is the greater feminist heroine when taken alongside Elizabeth Bennet; however, Hardy writes her story almost exclusively from the perspective of his male characters, leaving her represented as two-dimensional in comparison to

To begin one may note the almost ridiculous piety with which the film views the institution of marriage. Mrs. Robinson is made into a villain due to her decision to have sex outside of her marriage, and the film presents her and Ben's relationship as a one-sided seduction, even though they do not actually act on their desires until Ben initiates a second meeting. That the older, sexually-active woman is made into a villain is simply one element of the film's otherwise mundane

The Relationship Between Maxim and Rebecca Marriage is the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by the law (Marriam). It symbolizes love, commitment, and unification between two people. In Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca , the late Mrs. De Winter of Manderley and Maxim De Winter did not convey a true marriage with each other. A real marriage requires a deeper level of commitment from both parties consisted of honesty, loyalty, and communication.

Mis-en-scene shows Viven matching Marlowe in wit and power. ‘You're not very tall are you?' represents the ‘higher standing' in society as a woman in late war America.

When adapting a work of literature into a film, the filmmaker takes into consideration what that specific piece of literature conveys in terms of motif and attempts to portray that aesthetic value onto the screen. Jane Campion’s Bright Star is an adaptation of John Keats’ letters and poems to Fanny Brawne. Her film is a faithful adaptation in which it captures the emotional aspects of these pieces of literature and physically displays them on the screen in a manner that represents the subtext of the literature it is based on. The difficulties of adapting these letters and poems arises from the one-sided perspective that only reveals some insight into how John Keats felt. Campion’s take on the tragic love affair doesn’t play from Keats’