This can be seen in one way in a film like Contempt, where the subject matter is filmmaking itself, allowing for the intrusion of the filmmaker into the film in a very self-referential way.

William W. Demastes discusses dramatic realism and finds that it lies most specifically in the area of motivations:

To break with the rules of reality is to create something other than realism. When melodrama transforms a villain into a reformed penitent without sufficient preparation, it has broken accepted rules of psychological credibility. When a letter magically arrives exactly when the plot requires it -- to save the farm at the last moment -- temporal credibility is shattered for most of us. We usually deride poetry from the mouths of dock workers. When sudden confessions of love resolve apparently irreconcilable conflicts, we usually call it romantic comedy and write it off as unrealistic. And when an innocent...
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