Too Much: Melodrama on Film

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 the stakes are high, and characters rarely behave rationally.

Despite, or because of, its popularity, melodrama has repeatedly been dismissed by critics. A rare cinematic form to concern itself with women’s inner lives, the films in this expansive genre span infidelity, motherhood and exploitation. 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.

Across a two-month season of films, the BFI celebrates the very best of the cinema melodrama. From early classics like 1925’s Stella Dallas, to iconic masterpieces of the 1940s and 1950s such as Sunset Boulevard and Brief Encounter, and 21st Century favourites Volver and Far From Heaven.

As part of the season, also look out for some brilliant film talks and on Saturday 6 December there's even a cinema-themed speed dating event happening at the BFI Bar!