Contesting Tears: Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

by StanleyCavell (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $28.18

  Stanley Cavell identified a genre of classic American films that engaged these questions in his study of comedies of remarriage, Pursuits of Happiness . With Contesting Tears , Cavell demonstrates that a contrasting genre, which he calls the melodrama of the unknown woman, shares a surprising number and weave of concerns with those comedies. Cavell provides close readings of four melodramas he finds definitive of the genre: Letter from an Unknown Woman , Gaslight , Now Voyager , and Stella Dallas .