Essay - Melodramatic and Comedic Modes the Differences Between the Melodramatic and...

Melodramatic and Comedic Modes

The differences between the melodramatic and comedic modes: "Two For ***** Seesaw" (1962) ***** "Apartment for Peggy" (1948)

Melodramas began literally as dramas set to music. This heightened and simplified the emotions portrayed in melodramatic plots. The early melodramas depended upon a cle*****r conflict between good and evil, and an eventual happy resolution that satisfied conventional morality. Comedy likewise often makes use of stereotypical situations and characters, but with the ***** of irony. It is characterized by a refus*****l to take ***** protagonist's obsessions at pure, face value and thus adds humor ***** the situation rather than strives ***** pathos.

Both "Two ***** the Seesaw" (1962) and an "Apartment for Peggy" (1948) are films about persons undergo*****g a crisis in their lives. They demonstr*****te how ***** cope with change, like the tumult of the 1960s or the aftermath of W*****ld War II. However, while both films are ***** in cities, one film exemplifies the comedic mode of film narrative development, ***** ***** other could be characterized as a melodr*****ma, as it takes what the o*****r ***** sees ***** *****ous, as worthy of tragedy to the point of bathos or excessive emotion.

***** "Two For the Seesaw" (1962) the Midwestern protagonist Jerry Ryan, played by Robert Mitchum, has experienced an existential crisis. He has come ***** New York, after having lost his job and his wife in Nebraska, and ***** ensu*****g months of wandering the city, broke and depressed, have plunged into nearly suicidal despair. He meets a freewheeling dancer played by Shirley MacLane named Gittal Mosca. The interactions between these two lonely characters demonstrate with the use ***** *****dic contrasts how Ryan's hang-ups are absurd, or at least not as bad ***** *****y seem.

Mosca's excesses suggest ***** Ryan should be less uptight. She lives on unemployment insurance, and freely indulges in sex, alcohol, and smoking, even though she has an ulcer. She does not c***** if she is ********** marginally employed. In **********, Ryan believes that his life ***** never been ***** 'own,' as he married and adopted his career because of social pressure, rat*****r than his real desires. Eventually, the Mitchum character becomes a l*****w clerk in ***** Y*****k ***** Mosca teaches dancing.

The humor from t***** scenario derives ***** the contrast between the Midwesterner and ***** New Yorker, the uptight ***** ***** freewheeling *****, and the fact that the more irresponsible person redeems the more uptight person. This reverses ***** audience expectations, and is keeping in line with the conventions of comedic reversal. ***** often depends upon role *****s, a contrast between two very different personalities, or between a contr*****sting personality and environment, ***** ***** contrast of "The Odd Couple," another comedic plot about two very different personalities living in a sm*****ll environment that cannot really accommodate the main characters.

***** Apartment f***** Peggy" is likew*****e is set in a small, enclosed environment. In this 1948 *****ilm, a professor named Henry Barnes is deeply *****. He rents an attic to a recently returned