Word: epical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...virtues of Greek naturalism. After Gluck's death, better composers than he utilized some of his reforms, while Orfeo all but disappeared from the standard repertory (the Met revived it two years ago). Now the endless search for operatic treasure has driven the recordmakers back to Gluck; both Epic and Decca have issued nearly complete versions of the opera (and RCA Victor is recording its own version in Rome...
...Warner Bros., producer of The Spirit of St. Louis (TIME, March 4), had reason to wonder if the epic's hero, Charles A. Lindbergh, is still a hero in his own home town. After big hoopla in Little Falls, Minn. (pop. 6,717), Spirit, showing in two local theaters, grossed a miserable $7.50 in one house on the second night of its run. Warner Bros.' take for the evening...
...celluloid epic patterns set by D. W. Griffith in 1915 have changed very little: you just take some romantic, legendary, historical period like Reconstruction in the South, add a zesty love affair or three between ideal "period" characters to raise the story above documentary level, and interpret history in some engrossing way. Nowadays you also spend five million dollars or so and tell people movies are better than ever, in hope that you will make back the five million...
When it is not peeking in upon Northern boys swearing love to dainty Southern belles, and dashing Southern gentlemen swearing love to Northern girls, the movie pursues a great epic-theme: the heroic South certainly got a rotten deal after the Civil War. In an attempt to insure that "carpetbagger" will leave a bitter taste in every moviegoer's mouth, the film details the labor pains of the nation's birth...
...acting is poor, but not wretched; the film is choppy, lacing together snapshots, almost, of war on the front, life at home, carpetbagger atrocities, and Lincoln--brave, good Lincoln in death; but it achieves some continuity, and is the best epic I have seen; which doesn't say much for movie epics in general--or for Birth of a Nation...