America. As the camera pans away from the spire of .
the church, which is at the heart of the town we .
see the rest of the surroundings; green fields and .
rows of similarly white houses. The white houses .
and church combined with the placid soundtrack, .
gives the impression of a seemingly morally .
untarnished community. Elsaesser states that all .
melodramas have a "sense of hysteria bubbling all .
the time just below the surface- and although .
hysteria might be a slightly exaggerated term for .
the events that unfold, the opening hints very .
strongly at tension likely to unfurl just because .
everything is too perfect to be true.
The family home is central to melodramas, .
especially so with the dramatic conflict that .
unfolds in Written on the Wind and Imitation of .
Life. Not only are they sites of emotional and .
psychological predicaments, they also symbolise .
excess and artifice. We frequently see characters .
from their reflection in mirrors, which are found .
all over Hadley mansion. The décor becomes an outer .
symbolisation of inner emotions. Mirror images .
physicalise the sense that the characters are .
trapped, suffocating and oppressed but also .
suggests their existence as well as their happiness .
is merely an image. Through this, Sirk critiques .
middle-class society by saying that wealth does not .
buy happiness and that the temporal happiness it .
ostensibly provides is all an illusion in the end. .
The huge spiral staircase combined with the giant .
chandelier hanging above it, most ostentatiously .
shows the opulence of the Hadley family's wealth. .
The staircase is situated centrally within the .
mansion and when shot, dwarfs anyone else in the .
frame. Universal believed that by presenting .
cinemagoers with what a bourgeois mansion looks .
like they were affording them the opportunity of .
temporary class displacement, which is also why a .
lot of effort was put into recreating Club 21'. .
Art director Robert Clatworthy who worked on .
