Word: melodrama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nights in a Barroom" fall hardest where it should have shone brightest. The specialty numbers--especialty those of old-timer Vic Faust, a toothless Al Smith with a hangover--click beautifully. But the attempts of the rest of the cast to pile on the old-fashioned melodrama with a trowel fall pretty flat. They use restraint where hamming is called for; and they don't even give the villain-hissing audience a fighting chance to display its wares. A livelier paced direction, with more emphasis on the exists and entrances that give blood-and-thunder its special quality would have...
Though less intriguing than its title, the second picture, "Sweater Girl," is an improvement on the feature. Mixing some really tense melodrama with Eddie Bracken's best, it comes through with a story that keeps the audience moderately jittery for nearly an hour. Two murders on a college campus are the basis for this murder mystery which conceals the villain's identity in the best Nick Carter style, while befuddling the audience with slapstick. Neither picture will be accused of belonging to the year's top ten, and they aren't too far from the bottom...
Across the Pacific (Warner) is a midsummer melodrama that scarcely gets out of the Atlantic. On a cruise down the east coast of North America (Halifax to the Canal Zone) are Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet. They have such a good time sunning themselves that they neglect to make much of a picture...
Amid the carnage Cinemactors Bogart and Astor manage to mix lighthearted love and heavy-handed melodrama with some funny conversation...
...intimacy of the summer theatre and the holiday spirits of the audience combine to make passable fare of such plays as "Little Women" or old fashioned melodramas. If it's melodrama, you can always laugh at the play and hiss the villain when he comes in with the mortgage. "Little Women," despite its lack of a villain and the fact that it is no carefree riot, manages to supply an ample quantity of the picturesque. The story is a childhood favorite built around a family attired in dresses lifted from Godey's Ladies' Magazine and smothered in Victorian ideals...