Lóránt Stőhr:
Without tears. Melodrama in post-1979 Hungarian films

In his essay, Lóránt Stőhr argues that following modernist aspirations to deconstruct classical narrative (a trend characteristic of the 1960s and the early 1970s) the genre of melodrama surreptitiously returned in films by Hungarian authors made during the late 1970s. According to the essay, as modernism was coming to an end, melodrama appeared in three directions in Hungarian film: in historical films, in films reflecting the mood of a generation, and in documentarist feature films. At the same time, sustaining the author’s distinctive style never allowed melodrama to showcase all its usual genre specifics, which are identified in the beginning of the essay. Instead, the characteristics of melodrama were always mixed with reflexive and self-reflexive gestures, grotesque and ironic stylistic features. In its pure form, melodrama appeared in Hungarian cinema only after the end of modernism: in part in films experimenting with mixing exaggerations of the distinctive characteristics of the melodrama genre with social reality. (Eskimo Woman Feel Cold, This I Wish and Nothing More); in part also in popular films made during the period following the 1989 transition to democracy, especially after 2000. There was no school, oeuvre emerging around Hungarian postmodern film (as with Pedro Almodóvar). Meanwhile, romantic melodrama films, which was intended as more sophisticated instances within the popular genre, did not meet the sort of success that romantic comedies have had. For this reason, the genre is still waiting to be accepted and recognized.