Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Michael Todd) brought Maurice Evans back to Broadway in the shortened, sharpened version with which he wowed G.I.s in the Pacific. It is frankly a tough guy's Hamlet, with the Prince himself anything but a softie. It moves swiftly and mounts steadily with the crackle of great melodrama. It cuts boldly across whole scenes-there are no gravediggers, no "Alas, poor Yorick," no obsequies for Ophelia. It cuts boldly across time: Actor Evans has laid it in a 19th-Century Denmark of waltzes and tight trousers...
...anything embarrassingly mushy or heroic. No one has to crack any bad jokes: Characters are brought in without formal introduction and bowed out before the audience gets to know them well. Human relationships are indicated sharply but briefly. In trying to steer between war melodrama and straight documentary reporting, Expendable beats a middle course through waters that are too rough for speed...
...Grey (Gainsborough-Universal) is a heavily romantic, British-made melodrama tailored for the matinee trade. Adapted from a sugary, swashbuckling novel by the late Lady Eleanor Smith, it is a Regency costume piece containing all the time-tested materials: a gypsy fortuneteller; a scowling, black-browed villain; a gushy diary kept by a doe-eyed girl named Clarissa who munches candied violets; a wavy-haired hero with beautiful strong teeth; a fire-breathing adventuress who dotes on discord and low-cut gowns...
...fiction writers laid one golden egg after another and sold them for golden prices. The public craved, and was given, gulps of cloak-&-dagger melodrama or sack-suit passion. Some of the year's novelists managed, with the help of book clubs and cinemagnates, to earn a life annuity with a single book. Among the bestsellers...
Miss Bacall occasionally remarks in a loud monotone: "I hate melodrama." Her protest does not, in any sense, stop the show. All the supporting players do their jobs efficiently. Wanda Hendrix stands out sharply as a downtrodden little...