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Suspenseful Situations: Melodramatic Narrative and the Contemporary Action Film
- Cinema Journal
- University of Texas Press
- 47, Number 2, Winter 2008
- pp. 74-96
- 10.1353/cj.2008.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
The concept of situational dramaturgy, a form of narrative construction inherited from nineteenth-century theatrical melodrama, reveals continuities between classical narrative and the "post-classical" action film. This essay argues that situations bridge spectacle and narrative, provide generative structures for action plots, and are enmeshed in the contemporary three-act structure.