All That Melodrama Allows
Fri 24 Oct - Sun 21 Dec
Get swept up in a wave of emotion this winter with our season of romance, passion and heartbreak.
From the vivid technicolor melodramas of émigré filmmaker Douglas Sirk in 50s Hollywood, to queer reinventions in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) and Pedro Almodóvar (All About My Mother), through to more recent provocative works from Todd Haynes (May December), this season brings back to the big screen a cinematic line of influence within the melodramatic style.
We’re kicking things off by marking the 70th anniversary of Sirk’s romantic classic All That Heaven Allows (1955), starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman – there’s an opportunity to join us to chat about the film together at our Deaf Conversations About Cinema screening on Mon 27 Oct. Fassbinder reworks this convention-crossing romance for a 70s German society in his powerful, moving critique Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), before Haynes later offers his own homage, with his rich period pastiche Far From Heaven (2003).
Alongside celebrating the female stars of melodrama who have drawn audiences to the cinema in their millions, the season also explores the common melodramatic trope of the ‘hysterical’ woman – join us for a discussion after a screening of Todd Haynes’ psychological drama Safe (1995) to dig into depictions of disabled women within the genre.
Moving beyond the cinema screens, we're also playing host to the Love Lost Hotline (Mon 3 - Thu 13 Nov) – an audio project inspired and informed by cinematic notions of story and longing, straight from the classic melodramas of Sirk. Here, in our Café & Bar, you're invited to enter a phone booth where strangers leave messages for a lost love, with each message forming part of the heartbreak archive: a collection of raw confessions, warped truths, spectral yearnings, and unresolved monologues.
Melodrama at its best manages to elegantly blend social critique with its trademark visual excesses, expressive staging and exaggerated performances – this is a season full to the brim with heightened tension, stylistic flourishes and big emotions. Time to get sucked in!
"You can’t make films about things, you can only make films with things, with people, with light, with flowers, with mirrors, with blood, in fact with all the fantastic things which make life worth living." - Douglas Sirk, as quoted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Part of Too Much: Melodrama on Film, a major UK-wide season celebrating cinema’s biggest emotions and heightened dramatics from around the world. Presented with the support of the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery.
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Upcoming screenings & events in this season
All That Heaven Allows
classified PG All That Melodrama Allows
Douglas Sirk’s heartbreakingly beautiful film about class and conformity in 1950s small-town America follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow and her handsome and earthy younger gardener.
Deaf Conversations about Cinema: All that Heaven Allows
All That Melodrama Allows
Join us at the 18:10 screening of All That Heaven Allows on Mon 27 Oct which will feature Descriptive Subtitles and an introduction from a guest speaker, followed by a post-screening discussion in the Café & Bar. Featuring BSL interpretation.
Magnificent Obsession
classified U All That Melodrama Allows
A rich playboy whose recklessness inadvertently causes the death of a prominent doctor tries to make amends to his widow, and falls for her in the process.
Lost Love Hotline
All That Melodrama Allows
An audio project that is inspired and informed by cinematic notions of story and longing. Here, you enter a phone booth where strangers leave a message for a lost love: maybe someone or something from your past, something that you're still aching for, that maybe never existed outside your own dreams.
Written on the Wind
classified PG All That Melodrama Allows
The Technicolor expressionism of Douglas Sirk reached a fever pitch with this operatic tragedy, which finds the director pushing his florid visuals and his critiques of American culture to their subversive extremes.
The Merchant of Four Seasons
classified 15 S All That Melodrama Allows
A self-destructive man leading a dissatisfied life tries to find meaning as a fruit vendor, but a heart attack impedes his ability to work, which turns his dissatisfaction into despair.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
classified 12A S All That Melodrama Allows
A troubled fashion designer strikes up a romance with a much younger woman.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
classified 12A S All That Melodrama Allows
A lonely widow meets a much younger Moroccan worker in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies.
All About My Mother
classified 15 S All That Melodrama Allows
In 1999 Almodóvar had both critics and audiences swooning as he weaved together this magnificent tapestry of femininity to deliver a high-camp operetta and poignant story of love, loss and compassion.
Marking the 30th anniversary of Todd Haynes’ psychological drama Safe (1995), this screening is an opportunity to explore the representation of disabled women within melodrama.
Far From Heaven
classified 12A All That Melodrama Allows
Todd Haynes’ homage to Douglas Sirk’s style of social critique by way of melodrama, masterfully tells the story of a well-to-do suburban couple in 1950s America, straitjacketed by convention, yet desperate to lead lives they are seemingly denied.
May December
classified 15 All That Melodrama Allows
From the outside, Gracie and Joe are the perfect suburban couple. That is, if you don’t take into account the fact that their relationship was a tabloid sensation 20 years ago.