Word: banalities
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...observant realistic comedy of banal family life, it is probably closer to the U. S. common denominator than Our Town or Life with Father. Much more of this life is skim milk or spilt milk than cream. It is a chronicle of vanishing dreams and growing regrets, of crotchets and quirks, affection and annoyance, gossip and eavesdropping, small skeletons in large closets. It fails to be drab because, at 70, its people are still kicking their heels, raising their voices, cocking their ears. They talk ridiculous bromides, but with passion ; they make absurd gestures, but with feeling. They...
...Black Book is primarily a volume of lamentations, breedings, prophecy, in which coarse, brutal or banal happenings at the hotel launch thoughts on the sickness...
...Baroness and the Butler" should have been even better, for the cast--Annabella, William Powell, Helen Westley, Henry Stephenson--and sets are considerably better. But banal treatment, poor direction, and a too melodramatic climax, rob the picture of much of its appeal. Shown together, however, the two films make a good double bill, being less similar and probably more entertaining, than this review would indicate...
Authors Bromley & Britten introduce their book with a promising question: "Joe and Jane petting on the back seat of an automobile are unimportant. Five million boys and girls petting on public highways have national significance." Their banal conclusion: "Today's young people are groping for a philosophy of living that will serve them in a changing world. They lack the measuring-rod of experience, but as a generation they are forthright, honest and courageous." Readers will want better evidence than is provided in Youth and Sex that these adjectives are appropriate for either the generation or Authors Bromley & Britten...
...Spain] is decades ahead of poster development in this country, simply because European advertisers have learned the commercial benefits of being outrageously noncommercial in poster art. . . . We have nearly all of our posters drawn by "pretty girl" artists and by uninspired hack commercial artists who draw the same banal signs for everybody and for everything...