Gustafsson, Tommy “The Visual Re-creation of Black People in a “White” Country: Oscar Micheaux and Swedish Film Culture in the 1920s”
Cinema Journal 47, Number 4. Summer 2008

     This article examines the fate of three films made by black independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux that were exported to Sweden in the 1920s. The article also aims to analyze Swedish silent film culture, and, by means of its structure explain the treatment, when it came to censorship and advertising practices, that Micheaux’s films received in Sweden. This article focuses on the three films that were exported to Sweden: Within Our Gates, The Brute, and The Symbol of the Unconquered. Considering that Micheaux, and other independent black filmmakers during the second and third decades of the twentieth century, struggled against censorship, worked with small-scale productions, and had vast problems with distribution-it appears quite puzzling that Micheaux succeeded in exporting some of his films abroad without the assistance of a major studio’s distribution channels. This article shows how most of the world would accept race films, but not face the truth about how blacks were treated. Oscar Micheaux’s films portrayed the treatment of blacks how he saw it. His films contained harsh language, beatings, and lynching among other themes. The Swedish censors edited the films so much that anything dealing with the message Oscar was trying to get across was lost. Anything dealing with injustice, cruelty, or stereotyping, of whites toward blacks was removed. The resulting film was usually two-thirds or less of the original cut.
This article also reveals the view of African Americans in Sweden at the same time as these race films were being made. The importance of films made by African Americans being imported to Sweden is evident as the article gives examples of Racist cinema being produced in Scandinavia at that time.

Gaines, Jane "The Scar of Shame": Skin Color and Caste in Black Silent Melodrama

Jstor.org, Cinema Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 (summer, 1987), pp. 3-21 <http://www.jstor.org/>

     This article shows how The Scar of Shame raises issues regarding the race and class constitution of the audience which bear on its mode of address. It tells how in the 1920’s “race movies” (movies made specifically for all black audiences) were created by the black bourgeoisie, in collaboration with the whites, for the entertainment of the class “below them”.  The class hierarchy of the blacks is explained through by showing the differences in the northern urban versus the southern rural black societies.

Gaines’ article argues that melodrama reenacts a moral pattern that parallels the moral system that that community operates upon.  The Scar of Shame, safely in a parallel universe can bring up emotionally volatile issues and traumatic outcomes.

A history of the discovery and restoration of The Scar of Shame described briefly but in detail.  It tells how it has become one of the most frequently exhibited examples of black cinema heritage, and how it has become one the source materials for new black independent film and video making.

The Scar of Shame was produced specifically for a black audience, but directed and photographed by white professionals. It shows the division of labor between white and black artists even when producing race films. 

The biggest point this article makes is how The Scar of Shame’s structure supports the case for the culpability of the upper and lower classes.

Cripps, Thomas Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era   Published by Oxford University Press US, 1993

     Chapter five of Cripps , titled “Hollywood Wins: The End of Race Movies”, is a summary of the origin of race movies, and the progression they took and role they played up until after the world war and civil rights movement.
Chapter five describes how race movies had risen out of segregation, and in a way prospered from it. The chapter shows that The Scar of Shame (considered the best of the race movies) provided the black audience with a shocking recognition of their plight and helped put forth a group moral that urged the black middle-class to strive for the “finer things”.
This chapter follows the progression of race films from their beginning, up until after the world wars when they became more and more unpopular even among African Americans. Cripps is not one sided when it comes to these films, he also gives us the bad side of race films. The point made is  that without segregation and persecution of African Americans these race films would not exist, shows that the production of these films was essentially feeding off of the black middle-class’ situation.
After the World Wars, there was not much use for race films anymore. With African Americans in the pentagon, meeting the President, and appearing eye-to-eye with white actors in Hollywood war movies, there were living examples of success for the middle-class to look at and imitate. Race films became a thing of the past, but this chapter shows that obviously they had meant something to African Americans; that they conveyed a sense and group that they could not find in any other medium.

Bowser, Pearl, Jane M. Gaines, and Charles Musser, editors. Oscar Micheaux & His Circle: African American filmmaking and Race Cinema of the silent era. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.

     This book, in addition to the Micheaux Film Company, there is much information on the “race film” companies. To list a few that it mentions, The Lafayette Players, The Normal Company, Colored Players Film Corporation, and the Maurice Film Company.
The history of these production companies covered help incredibly in understanding what went into producing, filming, and distributing race movies. It is a detailed resource on the history of independent silent African American filmmaking in the U.S.
Also included are brief discussions on the politics of black representation in cinema, and
“black aesthetics and film”,
The Colored Film Players Corporation, based in Philadelphia, was responsible for the most influential and famous of the race movies The Scar of Shame (1927). This book gives us insight into the history of the company that brought us this famous African American film. Along with the history, it shows ties that the Colored Players Film Company had to Oscar Micheaux, the influences he had on them, and vice versa.
In order for us to understand the importance of race films, it is imperative that we know the origins and understand the history of this genre of independent cinema. Oscar Micheaux & His Circle is a must read for those with interest in the very beginnings, and the essence and importance of race films.

Cripps, Thomas Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942   pg. 181-
Oxford University Press US, 1977

Slow Fade to Black traces the roles of blacks in American films during the first half century. Slow Fade to Black represents a backward step in the effort to understand the complex and often contradictory role of Blacks in the history of U.S. film. Racial roles continued to affirm second-class citizenship for Black Americans long after the "watershed year" of 1942. Cripps tells how even with the growing amount of African Americans in cinema every time someone from the black middle-class went to a theater, they still saw their favorite performers as maids, cooks, butlers, grooms, or, worst of all, "natives." The impact of what Black performers did off screen did not, as Cripps claims, "allow them to ignore the impact of what they did on it."
Interestingly, around 1895, blacks were seen favorably on screen; however, they soon vanished as whites gained more financial and technical control over the medium.
Cripps tells how with the fade out of race movies and the fade in of the black musical that humanely depicted black southern life and its spoilage by urbanization, these films helped to define the nature of the black role in the movies.
This book tells of the journey of blacks in cinema; the different stages of their struggle for equality in American cinema, and their artistic stature that was eventually gained by their sharpened identity formed through their urbanization.

Bauman (1985) says principal study of Benda's melodramas, along with Jan van der Veen's

Berlin and Leipzig, 1906

Studien zur Geschichte des Melodramas
by Edgar Istel 

p. 80 Reichardt, glass harmonia in Tod des Herkules

see melodrama entry, Monika Schwarz-Danuser. viours meanings of term melodrama, relevance of genre of mélodrame to opera more than just libretti

• Visions of Medea: Musico-Dramatic Transformations of a Myth

• Paolo Russo and Mary Ann Smart
• Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jul., 1994), pp. 113-124

Weissbrod, Rachel. "Exodus as a Zionist Melodrama." Israel Studies 4 (1999): 129-152. Project Muse. Indiana University Pres. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 6 Apr. 2008.

The Journal, by Rachel Weissbrod, "Exodus as a Melodrama", describes the cinematography and choice of characters that the director, Preminger, makes throughout the film. She identifies the differences between the film and the book especially with regard to character analysis. The melodramatic nature of the film is quite interesting in that Preminger tries to establish tense situations. He wanted to achieve the full emotional impact of most melodramas and he accomplished this in several scenes. For example, in the acre prison break-in, the close-ups on the heroes reveal their innermost emotions. Additionally, the film utilizes ticking clocks, adding drama to the focus on the dynamite and guns, and overdramatizing everyone’s emotions. Changing several facts from the book (meant to be a melodrama) makes the plot even more melodramatic. In the novel, Kitty’s husband died in World War II as a U.S. marine, but Preminger changes this to have him killed during a famous Haganah operation, “the night of the bridges.” When Kitty falls in love with Ari, who is a leader in the Haganah, it ensures the melodramatic nature of the film.

When this novel, already set to be a melodrama, is transformed for the screen and many of the subtle nuances changed to increase the emotional impact, Preminger establishes this film as a defiant melodrama. He used the conflict between the British and the Jewish people to direct a film with intense emotion. Between conflicts inside the Jewish resistance and violence against the British, every aspect of the film is dramatized to some degree. Though Preminger’s film is based on real events, the side stories are dramatized, as most movies are, to create a film that won three academy awards. Preminger avoids taking political sides by showing both the British and the Arabs “in a less negative light.” The intensity of Zionism at the time of the movie held every aspect of the film under critical review. Overall, Preminger created a melodrama by developing several relationships throughout the film and drawing upon real events as the back-story.

This article seeks to describe a new breed of films that emerged in the 1970’s.  Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was one of the films that epitomized and exemplified this type of film, which was the epic melodrama.  The article describes this type of film as pessimistic and theatrical, with heavy political and social influences such as Vietnam and Watergate, as well as formal European influences, which fit well with the heavy emphasis in this film on Italian-Americans.

The films that fall into this category are characterized by the larger than life characters, the intense emotions, and most importantly the great battle between good and evil.  In the case of The Godfather, this battle became an inner moral one, but nonetheless capable of creating just as much drama.  As the article continues, this film, as a direct result of the melodrama, strikes a chord within audiences.  It is suggested that perhaps this is simply because of the time during which it was released, and the political and social emotions that were still in the air as a result of Vietnam.  Thus, ultimately the historical and political events of the time become “a springboard” through which these movies become about much larger issues.  The Godfather, as claimed in the article is not simply about an Italian family linked to the mob, but also one of “greed, vengeance, and power.”

One of the symbolic manifestations in these films are the ways in which theater itself is brought into the script.  In The Godfather, specifically, there are various instances before turning points in the film, or bits that are used to foreshadow, where Italian melodrama is viewed. Another important aspect to these films are the manner in which they are rooted in particular genres already, gangster films in the case of The Godfather, and thus particular scenes, such as the wedding, further place the film in this context as well as providing another layer, emphasizing the family and Italian heritage of the Corleones.