Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...life, what havoe a frenzied crowd can wreak. The picture describes a lynching in the old West--the mistaken lynching of three innocent men by a mob too hungry for revenge to try the men fairly, Because it deals with the mob's crime realistically, because it avoids the melodrama that manages to ruin so many westerns, "The Ox-Bow Incident" is an excellent American movie...
...each character's attitude of the weakness that found such ready companionship in the lynching mob. The music, too, served its purpose--not perhaps so well as in such a western as "Duel in the Sun"--but the dull repitition of a prairie tune dampened any tendencies toward melodrama...
...second feature, "Somewhere in the Night," has a clever enough plot but falls into the pitfall of melodrama that its running mate escapes...
...spirited pacing and exaggeration Director Montgomery has made the most of his synthetic plot-which is still not quite enough. There are hints that the picture was intended as a burlesque of a familiar type of grade B melodrama. But with its air of sly sophistication it could also be taken as a subtler parody of standardized featherbrain farce. Every now & then, in unexpected bits of dialogue and situation, the film shows a fresh comic touch, but most of its effort is frittered away in indecision...
...time she has had her way, the plot has encompassed a torture scene and the remarkable regeneration of the heroine. It has also been looped and twisted into a tricky knot of complications and double crosses. Rope, in fact, proves only two things: 1) given enough plot, any Hollywood melodrama can be counted on to hang itself, and 2) when it comes to acting, Miss Calvet, for all her diamantine Gallic glamour, is only a rhinestone in the rough...