Filming in suave, charcoal-matte black-and-white, he frames the poignant mini-melodramas of daily life with a calmly analytical yet tenderly un-ironic eye.

NEWYORKER: Tabu

Peering into various celebrity real melodramas rather perversely cheers us up!

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They see their romantic disasters, shown in copious flashbacks, as Hollywood melodramas, their rustic gunplay in terms of war movies, their erotic dreams as musical numbers.

NEWYORKER: Hallelujah the Hills

First finding fame in Gainsborough Pictures' melodramas in the 1940s, the actress became best known for her role as Kate Harvey in the BBC One series from 1985 - 1990.

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With tact and care, the movie digs into all the subjects that lay concealed below the surface when Max Ophuls and Douglas Sirk were filming their own melodramas in the nineteen-fifties.

NEWYORKER: Far from Heaven