Melodrama
With its origins in the novel and the theater, melodrama appeared in late 18th-century Europe and reached maturity at the turn of the 20th century.…
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Film Subject Overview
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
Sirk, Douglas (1900–1987)
Douglas Sirk was a German émigré director who was widely celebrated for his melodramas produced for Universal Studios during the 1950s, which inspired generations of…
Archer, William (1856–1924)
Born in Edinburgh, William Archer served as a London theater critic from 1881 to 1920. He retired from weekly reviewing when his melodrama The Green…
Ophüls, Max (1902–1957)
Max Ophüls is an important critic and filmmaker of the postwar period, known for his opulent set design, kinetic long-takes, and proto-feminist melodramas, a source…
Mikio, Naruse (1905–1969)
Naruse Mikio was a popular and critically renowned Japanese film director who was active from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s. He completed eighty-nine films,…
Shinpa
Shinpa, the shortened version of the Japanese word shinpageki, or new school drama, was an early Japanese attempt at reforming the theater along modernist lines.…
Furukawa, Roppa (1903–1961)
Furukawa Roppa was a Japanese comedian, film actor, and essayist, who was known for his round face with Lloyd’s glasses. He was active before and…
Mori, ōgai (1862–1922)
Mori ōgai served as a surgeon in the Japanese Imperial Army, and was a translator, novelist, dramatist, and literary theorist during the Meiji and Taisho…
Rice, Elmer (1892–1967)
Born Elmer Reizenstein in New York City on September 28, 1892, Elmer Rice’s career spanned nearly fifty years. He wrote over fifty plays, including collaborations…
Drachmann, Holger Henrik Herholdt (1846–1908)
Holger Drachmann was a Danish writer and painter, active in the period of the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia (1870s–1890s). He was influenced by Georg Brandes…
Duvivier, Julien (1896–1967)
Julien Duvivier was a Golden Age French film director active from the 1919 to the 1960s. He made a name for himself in the 1930s…
Benavente, Jacinto (1866–1954)
Jacinto Benavente y Martínez was a Spanish dramatist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Author of more than 170 plays, he was awarded…
Beckmann, Max (1884–1950)
A painter, printmaker, sculptor, and writer, Max Beckmann achieved success at an early age. After studying art in Weimar and spending some months in Paris,…
Horton, Lester (1906–1953)
Lester Horton, regarded as one of the founders of American modern dance, worked outside the established center of New York City, establishing a permanent dance…
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
Anglo-American director Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most influential auteurs in cinema history, making more than fifty feature films between 1925 and 1976. He…
Grotesco Criollo
The grotesco criollo was a genre belonging to the commercialized theater of Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s. The influence of the Italian grottesco…
Hawks, Howard (1896–1977)
Born Howard Winchester Hawks in Goshen, Indiana, to a wealthy industrialist family, he is considered one of the major directors of the classical Hollywood studio…
L’Herbier, Marcel (1888–1979)
Marcel L’Herbier was a French pioneer avant-garde (impressionist) filmmaker and theorist who made more than forty films between the 1920s and the 1950s. During World…
Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)
Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of…
Zangwill, Israel (1864–1926)
Israel Zangwill was a British-Jewish author, journalist, and activist. Among his best-known literary works are the novel The Children of the Ghetto (1892), and the…
Dutt, Guru (1925–1964)
Guru Dutt, original name Vasanth Kumar Shivsankar Padukone, was a highly influential actor, writer, producer, and director of the Hindi film industry based in Bombay.…
Modernism and Film Music in Latin America
Modernism in Latin America was, as in Europe, a movement that began as a reaction to late-nineteenth-century artistic currents, primarily in visual and plastic art,…
Izumi, Kyōka (1873–1939)
Izumi Kyōka was a novelist and shinpa playwright whose plays provided the heart of the shinpa repertory and demonstrated a new model for dramatic literature.…
Geijutsu-za
The first iteration of the Geijutsu-za (Art Theater) was founded in 1913 by the actors Shimamura Hōgetsu (1871–1918) and Matsui Sumako (1886–1919) after they were…