by Carmen Paddock, Staff Writer

While being the first seated for a hot new release is always a thrill for film fans, diving through cinema history’s great back catalogue is equally rewarding year after year. Like many film fans, I sometimes set myself purposeful goals when watching older films–frequently around a director’s or actor’s new release or anniversary–but sometimes, the themes find me instead.

In 2024, I did not set out to catch up on melodramas (a loose category prioritising emotional responses, often with exaggerated characters and events), but the films that stick most in my mind as the year ends are the big, the bold, the luscious, and the overwrought. But at their heart, the best melodramas are profoundly human. The melodrama genre’s exaggeration and explicit, sometimes shameless appeal to the emotions sometimes gets a bad name for being overblown or outdated; after all, film is the medium of realism, doing away with theatrical artifice.

But sometimes, artifice unlocks deeper truths. There is something profoundly comforting and believable about the weight these universal human experiences and emotions are given in melodrama. Indeed, it seems telling that several of these films date from the 1950s-1970s, in the heyday of Hollywood embracing “Method” performances and celebrating psychological truth therein (though as I found out, the melodrama is perhaps rarer but not dead in 21st century cinema). We might not all be caught in love triangles and grave geopolitical events, but watching grand echoes of our own (often far pettier) experiences provides both entertainment and solace.

Many of these films are classed as psychological dramas, epics, war romances, gothic mysteries, or just plain dramas. Throughout 2024, I found what connected them was a heightened way in which characters responded to the challenges they face, externalising responses for maximum catharsis. The list below chronicles the order in which I came to these new discoveries in 2024, tying together the

From Here to Eternity (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1953)

If going in blind to this Hawaii-set war romance, there are two moments that may startle modern audience members to comic effect, rather than the intended effect of monumental tragedy. These aspects certainly baffled and amused me on my first viewing in January 2024. But putting aside cynicism, coincidence, and (certain aspects of) critical thought, From Here to Eternity is a portrait of startling brutality and the suppression of the individual in military, nuclear family, and socioeconomic complexes. And the cast–Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Sinatra playing against type–are at the height of their powers.

Senso (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1954)

Throughout his career, Visconti alternated between a gritty neorealism and lush portraits of the upper classes, often those lost to a bygone time. Senso follows an aristocratic Venetian woman, unhappily married, who begins an unwise love affair with an Austrian officer. Her romance has added stakes: the fate of the Italian liberation and nationalist movements (and by extension, her revolutionary cousin’s life), or the continuation of Habsburg rule in Venice. Sometimes, everyday love feels world-ending, but Senso makes love’s possibilities for reinvention and destruction tangible.

Margaret (dir. Kenneth Lonnergan, 2011)

For teenagers, the stakes of existence are higher. Everything is life or death. Sure, Margaret (Anna Paquin) – Lonnergan’s eponymous heroine – goes through a lot more than most, very quickly, and her reactions to a world she does not like or understand are never sugar-coated. In my opinion, it is the most difficult watch on this list for its rawness; many of its conflicts would be avoided or toned down if Margaret took a breath and a step back, but her refusal to is painfully, horribly, recognisably human. Margaret is the perfect melodrama for the age of global anxiety and overwhelming yet ill-defined social responsibility.

Conversation Piece (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1974)

Like the eponymous style of painting, Visconti’s penultimate film turns his adoring critique of wealth to a present day setting, blending the approaches of his earlier works. The melodrama here expresses itself in longing and fascination – made most obvious when Visconti’s camera zooms in on the Professor’s (Burt Lancaster) face when he first sees Konrad (Helmut Berger). Konrad’s seedy, leftist past is a symbol of a different sort of decadence and beauty than what the old, conservative art connoisseur knows. What follows is a titanic culture clash underpinned by the universal, uniting drive for connection and understanding.

In Harm’s Way (dir. Otto Preminger, 1965)

This is not a good film, per se–its sweeping scale in terms of battleship settings and runtime is a feat in itself, but the middle sections find no momentum for the plot. While plodding along, the film’s most interesting sections happen in the slow-burn, very adult romance of John Wayne’s Rock Torrey and Patricia Neal’s Maggie Haines. Caught in the middle of the ocean and the middle of a war, their passion – as quiet and clear-eyed as it may be compared to other passions on this list – proves the grounding force and connection in a world on fire.

Suddenly, Last Summer (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959)

The second film starring Montgomery Clift on this list, Suddenly, Last Summer uses its Southern gothic setting, Katharine Hepburn’s glorious archness, and Elizabeth Taylor’s pathos to capture the unsaid. In 1959, the Hays Code’s effects were fading but still enforced, so screenwriters Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams approach the subject of a man murdered while cruising in Europe obliquely. The trauma of the event is such that no one in the dead man’s family can bear to talk about it – to the point of agoraphobic repression or full-on mental breakdown – and only when Cathy (Taylor) faces her memories can the oppressive spell be broken.

Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Powell and Pressburger never shied away from externalising the unsaid through colour and choreography, and Black Narcissus was perhaps the first time their partnership leaned into the psychological and uncanny. As Martin Scorsese points out in the 2024 documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, the convent’s colour scheme is all whites and cool tones until red begins to seep into the inner and outer lives of Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth, undone by the sight of a man in short shorts. Of course, the film was denounced by the US Catholic National Legion of Decency for its portrayal of lust among nuns, but watching today, the extremity of its colours, setting, and emotions each fit the other. We may not all find ourselves in new places that are quite as foreign in language, customs, and locale as the Himalayas are to these British nuns, but it is not the most natural thing to react unnaturally when confronted with a world we do not understand?