The Many Moods of Melodrama: Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir

Five separate titles from France and the United States offer different takes on melodrama, from the traditional to the avant-garde. The program includes Mary Pickford in a new restoration of An Arcadian Maid (1910), the historical drama The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908) featuring an original score by Camille Saint-Saëns, the 1928 film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” episode 2 of the French protonoir c...