There is much debate in film studies about which films are considered melodramas. Film scholar Steve Neale's essay, “Melodrama and the Woman's Film,” describes the paradigm shift that melodrama experienced from the silent era to the 1970s. On the other hand, Christine Gledhill's essay, “Rethinking Genre” and “The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation,” suggest that melodrama is only a mode and, in fact, not a genre. While Thomas Elsaesser's essay “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on The Family Melodrama,” identifies the different types of melodrama. But what is the true form of the melodramatic genre? At first, it might be difficult to understand why an animated film like Curious George made my nephew ask me why he felt like crying when the monkey was separated from his zookeeper, and then proceeded to ask me why the film it made him sad. What my little nephew didn't know was that I was crying too. Melodramatic films are those that make you cry: films that have an essence of verisimilitude, evoke pathos and use music to accentuate the "drama". In this essay I will take elements from Neale, Elsaesser, and Gledhill's discussions of melodrama to support my definition. At the end of this essay, I will provide a brief explanation of why the melodramatic film as contemporary drama is important and universally understood. For a film to be considered a melodrama it must have a presence of verisimilitude. In other words, a melodramatic film must imitate real life. According to Elsaesser's essay, he states that, "even though the situations and feelings defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally different from anything in real life, the structure had a truth and a life of its own, which artists could make part of of their material". (37... half of the paper... predicts the loss that Pita will suffer. In adulthood, one is familiar with extreme sadness and real suffering. Most adults are familiar with the feeling of never being able to say you love someone because they died or because you lost your favorite toy Even if you haven't experienced life-changing events, we have all experienced separation from our mother's womb into the world. Our first cry is our first trauma that is rooted in our psyche. That is why in melodramatic films there are solemnly those of great pathos that make the viewer cry because he becomes familiar with the pain (even a five-year-old can understand), and at the end there are cries of joy for. pain. purpose of catharsis that alleviates the trauma of separation (Why is crying therapeutic? How does it alleviate this trauma? It leads us to confront the separation anxiety you are referring to.??)