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Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

1998; Oxford University Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/431958

1540-6245

Thomas E. Wartenberg, Stanley Cavell,

Samuel Beckett and Modernism

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 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.