Melodrama

‘If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.’– Lillian Hellman This collection was produced to mark the BFI's 2025 season 'Too Much: Melodrama on Film'. Cinema is, by nature, melodramatic. Beautiful people perform impossible stories, hearts on sleeves as they dance through an artificial world. In a passionate purge of emotion, melodrama employs exaggerated staging, score and performance to create the ultimate spectacle. The stories it tells are intimate and familial, but stakes are high, and characters rarely behave rationally. They are human, after all. Despite, or because of, its popularity, melodrama has repeatedly been dismissed by critics. They find sincerity confronting, a lack of restraint distasteful. As women through the ages have been told, it’s not right to be so hysterical. A rare cinematic form to concern itself with women’s inner lives, the films in this expansive genre span infidelity, motherhood and exploitation. The legacy of early ‘women’s pictures’, created for female audiences with their favourite female stars, echoes across generations and around the world. As in life, these women do not always triumph. Imperfectly feminist yet endlessly relatable, their sensationalist struggles carry searing social commentary beneath a glossy veneer.