Many thanks to those who responded to our competition. The captions have been read, and the winner decided upon….see the winning entry below…
Lady Diana: “No, I won’t do it. You can’t make me do it! I won’t dance the Gangnam style!!”
Congratulations Katerina Flint-Nicol for your delightfully apposite caption. Your prize will be with you shortly.
Supply the line The Sheik (Rudolph Valentino) has just said to Lady Diana (Agnes Ayres) – or vice versa! The best suggestion will be published here on the Melodrama Research Group website and will win a new copy of South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre and National Cinema, edited by Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann.
Email your suggestions to sp458@kent.ac.uk by noon on Wednesday 6 February 2013 – and come see the film that evening when it is shown as part of the Melodrama Research Group fortnightly screenings and discussions this term, 5 – 7 pm in Jarman 7.
All are welcome to attend the second of this term’s melodrama discussion and screening sessions which will take place on the 6th of February in Jarman 7, from 5pm to 7 pm.
We will be showing The Sheik (George Melford, 1921) 86 mins
This silent American classic broke attendance records at two major New York theatres in its first week and propelled its male lead, Rudolph Valentino, to stardom. The film’s action takes place in the Sahara Desert where English socialite Lady Diana (Agnes Ayres) is kidnapped by Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan (Valentino). After reaching an understanding they are separated by bandits, compelling Sheik Ahmed to take matters into his own hands.
Do join us to experience all the melodramatic plot twists and turns, Valentino in his most famous role, and the interesting depiction of male/female relations.
All are welcome to attend this term’s first screening and discussion session on the 23rd January in Jarman 7, from 5pm to 7pm.
We will be showing The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952) 71 mins
Although hailed now as a taut film noir classic and B picture masterpiece, The Narrow Margin was announced by the New York Times on its first release as ‘a Suspense Melodrama’. The film follows the attempts of a determined Chicago policeman to get a witness to a trial in Los Angeles , and the mob’s equally determined attempts to stop him. The action takes place on the train for the majority of the film’s running time, and is just as breakneck and relentless as the intercity flyer.
This term the melodrama group will meet on a fortnightly basis for viewings and discussion sessions. In the even-numbered weeks of term, beginning in Week 14 (Weds 23 January), we will meet in Jarman 7 from 5pm to 7pm to watch and discuss films which have been associated with this contentious genre. All are welcome. More details will be posted here in due course.
Unfortunately another melodrama research group meeting cannot be organised before the end of term. Details of our first meeting of 2013 will be posted here when available.
But Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year or Holiday Greetings to everyone!
Until we meet next term, here’s a relevant film still for the time of year: Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly in Robert Siodmak’s Christmas Holiday (1944). While most (including the AFI) classify it as film noir, it does have melodramatic elements. Indeed the film noir has points of crossover with the gangster film or the ‘crime melodrama’. Perhaps discussion of such a definition will be a good starting point for 2013!
Sorry, but due to unforeseen circumstances, today’s meeting is cancelled. Information about the next meeting will be posted here when available. In the meantime, here’s a still from D.W. Griffith’s film melodrama Way Down East (1920) which aptly sums up our current weather…
The group will be meeting in Jarman 7 on Wednesday 5th December 4-5pm. This will be a great opportunity to discuss the recent research seminars, and to plan future work.
Above: A poster advertising Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956)
A still from Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956)
20th November 2012, GLT3 5.30pm
Dr Gary Needham, Nottingham Trent University
Revisiting Tea and Sympathy (1956): Minnelli, Hollywood, Homosexuality
Despite never once mentioning the word homosexuality, Tea and Sympathy nonetheless seems to say a lot about homosexuality in the 1950s. An effete young man, nicknamed ‘Sister Boy’ by his Fraternity, struggles with his unmanly ways only to be rescued by an older woman, the housemaster’s wife played by Deborah Kerr, who commits a sacrificial act of adultery in order to ‘cure’ his masculinity of its feminine ills. She tells him in the play/film’s most famous line: ‘Years from now when you talk about this, and you will, be kind’.
A minor, often forgotten work of Vincent Minnelli and 1950s Hollywood, Tea and Sympathy is known as a risible film that is often flagged up as key example of Hollywood’s disservice to homosexuality: it features heavily in The Celluloid Closet. Based on a successful Broadway play and released at the height of the ‘Lavender Scare’, Tea and Sympathy has been used in many an argument to illustrate a range of problematic assumptions, representations, and ideas around homosexuality and the regulatory and apparently regressive nature of Hollywood. Tea and Sympathy does confirm and conform to a number of these arguments, it caused trouble at MGM and is unquestionably problematic yet, as I will explore in this paper, there seems to something more complex and subtle going on in Tea and Sympathy: the simple misery it narrates is often contradicted by the mise en scene. Minnelli makes reference through film style to other closeted artists working in a mire of contradictions, for example, J. C. Leyendecker, central to the production of representations of American masculinity. Furthermore, a number of key scenes (‘beefcake on the beach’ and ‘fraternity pyjama fight’ mainly) tell us a good deal about the relationship between homosociality, homoeroticism, and Hollywood and the contradictions inherent in ideas that 1950s homosexuality was only visible and knowable as gender inversion.
Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood film Magnificent Obsession (1954)
A poster advertising Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955)
30th October 2012, GLT2, 5.30 pm
Dr John Mercer, Birmingham School of Media
Acting and Behaving Like a Man: Rock Hudson’s Performance Style
Rock Hudson is rarely considered to be one of the great film actors. Indeed it has become a popular legend that it took 38 takes for the young actor to deliver his only line in his 1948 debut FighterSquadron. At the height of his fame in the 1950s he was most often praised for his stoicism and persistence, consistently described, using a back-handed compliment, as the ‘hardest working actor in Hollywood.’
In 1946 the actor and writer Alexander Knox wrote an essay called ‘Acting and Behaving’ published in Hollywood Quarterly that discussed both stage and screen acting making a distinction between acting (the actor’s craft) and behaving (the performance offered by most film stars and for Knox at least an inferior activity.) In this paper I am using this broadly contemporaneous distinction to try and understand Hudson’s performances. My intention is in part at least an attempt to recuperate Rock Hudson as an actor and to make a case for the study of the type of performance style that he is associated with.
As a successful Hollywood star Hudson was to perform in roles that defined the ideals of mid 20th century American masculinity in effect he was the epitome of heteronormativity. Working with a variety of directors and across a diverse range of genres from westerns to war film, melodrama to romantic comedy Hudson illustrated what it meant to be a man.
Initially self-taught, Rock Hudson learnt his craft ‘on the job’ aiming for a naturalistic style. He took to heart Raoul Walsh’s early advice; “Don’t try to act…Remember up on that screen you’re magnified forty times. Be natural, underplay and it will look great.” The performance style that Hudson was to become associated with allows for an especially limited and circumscribed expressive range for a male actor and consequently the need for nuance is paramount. Hudson’s performances then can be understood as a form of ‘behaving’. My argument in this paper is that the ‘behaving’ that Hudson demonstrates in his films is a very refined form of performance doubly complicated by the details of his personal life.
In this paper I will explore Hudson’s ‘behaving’ in Written on the Wind (1956) and other films by Douglas Sirk.