Romantic melodrama reached its peak as a film genre in the postwar years of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, with such masters of the form as George Stevens, Elia Kazan, Douglas Sirk and John Stahl directing big stars of the period in some of their most exciting and emotional performances. This spotlight is broken into categories including Young Lovers, which features luminous star-crossed romances between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951), and James Dean and Julie Harris in Kazan's East of Eden (1955).

Joan Melodramas become a category of their own, with the fabulous Miss Crawford suffering exquisitely through such vehicles as Mildred Pierce (1945) and Harriet Craig (1950), as well as taking the lead in Humoresque (1946), Possessed (1947) and Autumn Leaves (1956) in Complicated Romances. This category also presents complex couplings like Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember (1957), and David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson involved in a tortured illicit romance.

Also deserving a classification of their own are Sirk Melodramas, with the German-born director creating some of the most sensational, extravagant dramas of the 1950s including Imitation of Life (1959) starring Lana Turner; and a double-bill starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955). Drifters Trying to Redeem Themselves includes Steve McQueen as a footloose Texas musician in Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965) and William Holden as a former football star adrift in Kansas in Picnic (1955).