In love with Melodrama

Calling something melodramatic in cinema is usually used as a pejorative term.  Brings to mind daytime moves, odyssey international pictures (in fairness some of these where cool) and those watch out for drugs, bad crowd, alcohol information films. 

Even in film school one of my most respected and for me personally the best teacher in the university by a good country mile. He is a great film writer (many books in BFI press including one on Hitchcock) and teacher. Talking over some of my favorite films of the 50's he mentioned in conversation he used to like & enjoy melodrama but recently had changed his opinion. 

One feels that when you are a cinephile surrounded by critics of the time its hard to keep to what is true in your experience of film. That just sitting back and enjoying the film as it unfolds and reaches further than just your visual cortex but rather into the primordial lizard part of the brain that is steeped in emotion, instinct and pleasure. 

A film either hits you or doesn't, whats worse than someone gushing over a film only to go and see it and think goddamn that sucked. Or the cardinal sin in every film course M.A tell people what to think about the film before they see it.

I just like to sit back and let it wash over me, be it a great hammer B move like Vampire Circus or something more towards that pinnacle of cinema like Paris, Texas. 

Melodrama avoid it in life, catch it on DVD (or Netflix) 

Try this one for size directed by the great Vincente Minnelli and staring Old Blue eyes