Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Italian winegrower who woos a young waitress by mail, wins her by submitting his youthful foreman's photograph in place of his own. Though resentful of being tricked, she goes through with the marriage, only to sin with the foreman. The husband finds out, but reason prevails over melodrama because all three know what they really want-the Italian a wife, the girl a good home, the foreman his freedom...
Seldom, either, has there been such monotony of murder. The one-man reign of terror that ends with Richard's death on Bosworth Field not only demotes the play from tragedy to melodrama; it eventually gives horror the colorlessness of habit. Toward the end, Shakespeare's Richard III is very nearly as bad as Shakespeare's Richard...
Last week's production accepted, indeed courted, Richard as melodrama. Everything was painted in bold primary colors; a good deal was literally bathed in baleful crimson light. But the thing had pace and a certain crude excitement, and Richard Whorf's usurper, limping of foot and swift of brain, was enjoyably malign. There was nothing subtle about any of it, and toward the end there was much that was strident; but if never anything more, it was a pretty good show...
Some of you may have thought that the Nineteenth Century mortgage melodrama was dead, but if so, you have sadly underestimated Hollywood's talent for reincarnation. "In "The Girl from Mauhattan," the second picture at the Pilgrim, the mortgage foreclosure appears with all its hideous threats and Dorothy Lamour as the hapless victim. But a few enticing twists have been added. The villain doing the foreclosing is, of all things, a church looking for a new site, and the hero is an all-American fullback turned minister. Dorothy Lamour, Charles Laughton, and George Montgomery are all involved in this hideous...
...Knife" is first-class melodrama, a thing that turns up too infrequently. After a poor opening scene, the situation becomes engrossing and before the end the spectator is likely to be on the edge of his seat. The ending itself is in the best Odets fashion and couldn't have been more powerful had Leo the lion devoured the hero on stage. If Mr. Odets primary purpose was to expose, in his own way, the minds that govern the film industry, he has succeeded. Marcus Hoff, of Hoff Interprises, and his henchman, very ably played by J. Edward Bromberg...