ESSAYS

The Unfaithful Wife by Claude Chabrol – melodrama as genre and as a style

On the occasion of their screening at Film programmes, Claude Chabrol’s films once again prove to be the source of reinterpretation in terms of genre, style and authorship. This text centres on Chabrol’s film The Unfaithful Wife and through linking narratological problems of structure within the codes of genre and the problems of style (of the author and the entire cinematic trend), the author opens the topic of melodrama. Answering the question of the definition of melodrama, the author of this paper attempts to explain specific semantic layers in the film which go beyond the semantical frame of the author and the genre system.

Sonja Tarokić