Word: maudlinity
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...picturing squalid, old women sitting in doorways or sunning themselves upon the endless steps and terraces of the native quarter. Occasionally, however, the emotional implications of both setting and plot become cloying. A scene in which a fat hag tearfully recalls her past success on the stage turns maudlin, while the murder of an informer has all the qualities of an old time serial...
...party. The Corporations' failure to do this, Fox says, shows it "suffered from one of two things: A general attack of gullibility so astonishing as to tax credulity; or a feeling of sentimental affection for faculty members who were at least former Communists so great as to approach the maudlin." A member of this year's twenty-fifth Reunion class, Fox also supports the "Free Enterprise Fund" of Kenneth D. Robertson Jr., '29, which is designed to force "socialistic" professors to bring their wives into open forums...
...Blue Angel before packed audiences, Felicia was showing the results of her study. Wearing a plain black dress with a demure neckline, she sang with her hands pressed flat to her sides, used her face to help express the music. Her voice, which last winter often verged on a maudlin wobble, was fine-grained and pure even when she let it out in the climaxes. She ranged from such a lighthearted number as Lucky To Be Me to a torchy version of Come Rain or Come Shine to a dramatic monologue about a girl who gets picked...
...compositions written considerably after the sixteenth century were, in fact, performed, but the late Renaissance idiom so strongly pervaded the evening that I, for one, found myself judging these other works by 16th century standards. Thus Verdi's setting of Dante's Hymn to the Virgin Mary seemed maudlin after the more ethereal fervency of Palestrina. I do not know whether Verdi's melodramatic climaxes and sensuous cadences are inherently unsuited for religious music, but their operatic association have certainly made them so for me. Even Mozart did not fare well in such company, perhaps because the firmly established tonalities...
...scenes in acts two and three feature more drama than comedy. About to lose his land in act two, Jeeter pleads with the new owner to let him stay on; and at the end, his wife dead, he realizes that the land is no longer his. These scenes are maudlin bathos without a sympathetic treatment of Jeeter, and Martin's un-modulated buffoonery throughout the play kills audience feeling for him. His Jeeter is an unbelievable slapstick fool, and his transition to a man desperately fighting for his home is unconvincing...