Intermixing the tendentious and the generous, it's both a macabre and a hopeful piece of art, classic melodrama and lunatic comedy at once.

Today, as part of Fei's later works, Remorse at Death has been overshadowed by Fei Mu's immediate follow-up, the classic melodrama Spring in a Small Town (1948).

That may be why this film, based on a classic 1940's melodrama, is decidedly apolitical.

It's surprising that these classic melodramas are available in that they're published, and yet they're so rarely performed.

Mark-Anthony Turnage's "Twice Through the Heart" echoes the classic 19th-century melodrama except that its monologue is sung, not spoken.

It is good against evil, classic melodrama.

"It had all the elements of a classic melodrama," he said.

"The Outsiders" isn't as consistently great as "Rebel," Nicholas Ray's 1955 classic melodrama, which was released the year Mr. Coppola turned 16.

But it's classic melodrama, and it certainly establishes what all the fuss about Boyer, as a young man, was about - Saturday at 4 p.m. on CUNY.

Boucicault, for instance, author of The Colleen Bawn,The Shaughraun and many other classic Victorian melodramas, started out as a clerk in the Brewery at St. James's Gate.