Word: maudlinity
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Innumerable insights into the heart and mind of the American Fighting Man are provided in the several battle scenes. One by one the maudlin leather necks in Sergeant Wayne's squad soliloquize eloquently on the girls they left behind them, what they are going to do when they get back home, or even Why America Must Fight This Terrible War. Such elocution is invariably the signal for the speaker to be picked...
Chicago Deadline (Paramount) is a lagging, maudlin movie with a tricky plot that never quite gets untangled. A sentimental reporter (Alan Ladd) who finds a pretty corpse in a cheap hotel is moved to track down the people in her fat address book and find out how she came to her sordid end. After Reporter Ladd finally "winds up the case," there are at least two unexplained murders and a heroine whose life story is still pretty much of a mystery. The journalistic technique constantly threatens to make the movie a good study of sleazy big-city life...
...that followed Custer's last stand. But despite hordes of hopping-mad Cheyennes in full war paint, there is not a first-class Injun fight in the whole film. For some unaccountable reason the hair-raising possibilities of authentic history have been submerged in the muddled and often maudlin story of an overaged cavalry officer (John Wayne) in a U.S. Army outpost. More unaccountably, the paste-pot yarn was put together by two veteran scripters: Frank Nugent and Laurence Stallings...
Least successful of the "Quartet," "The Kite" indulges in some contrived symbolism to point up the struggle between a mother and wife for a young man's affections. The acting of the mother is exceptionally good but once again the author descends to the maudlin to close his story and good acting is not enough to redeem the plot...
...being a great lady, she is also a fratricide, a moral coward and a tosspot. Ingrid is supposed to make this heroine seem an appealing damsel in distress. The appeal, despite beautiful efforts, remains largely potential. The distress comes through without relief, mostly in long, pale-lipped monologues and maudlin confessions...