Emotion Pictures: International Melodrama

The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents a month’s worth of melodramas, just in time for the holiday season—which has been known to induce some melodrama itself. Films by early genre masters like George Cukor (Gaslight) and Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows) will be juxtaposed with silent movies, a wide range of international offerings (Fellini, Almodóvar, Leos Carax), modern-day tear-jerkers (think Ang Lee’ Brokeback Mountain and Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love) and shorts. A number of the works date from the 1950s, a golden age for the style; featured actresses include Bette Davis, Jane Wyman and Lillian Gish.