The first in-depth study of its subject, this book seeks to historically account for a type of modernist film that revolves around bereavement. Identifying the roots of the genre in classical melodrama and horror cinema, and tracing perennial themes and aesthetic devices through to the European and American
intellectual melodramas
of the postwar decades, the book provides a taxonomy of characteristics. In the course of detailed case studies, the book deploys the film theory of Gilles Deleuze and Daniel Frampton while making use of Freudian psychoanalysis and present-day grief counselling theory. In making its case for the new genre, the book reflects upon the ways in which the very notion of genre has, in the post-classical period, responded to changing exhibition patterns, the rise of domestic spectatorship, and the proliferation of Web-based film literature.