ABSTRACT
Whatever the stylistic and structural differences between stage melodrama and film melodrama, there is no question that movies succeeded in capturing the essence of sensational melodrama. Movies delivered abundant rapid action, stimulating violence, spectacular sights, thrills of physical peril, abductions, and suspenseful rescues. On a narrative level, film melodramas relied on very similar stories emphasizing pure villainy and heroism catalyzed by the villain’s jealousy and/or greed and often relying on extraordinary coincidences and sudden revelations and twists of circumstance. In what follows I offer a small sampling of one-and two-reel films between 1901 and 1913 before turning to a more detailed discussion of serial films between 1914 and around 1920. The survey does not purport to be systematic, comprehensive or studio-balanced; it simply presents some typical examples conveying the close intertextual connections between sensational stage melodramas and the films that took their place.
