Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Without poaching on melodrama, Director Richard Thorpe manages to add triumphant suspense to his mauled hero's removal from the torture hideout by having him, though blindfolded, scratch the door jamb in departing, count the steps going down to the car, recall the turns, a dip in the pavement, a stop-&-go signal, the sound of a calliope, etc. All these well-noted clues come home to roost when he goes over the ground a second time...
...parts of Writer-Director Sturges' fourth picture are better than its whole; it is a confusing mixture of satire, slapstick, drama, melodrama, comedy. Even so, it has many novel, hilarious moments...
...harmless piece of flimsy-whimsy about a poor little rich girl who makes friends with a kindly old tramp, visits him in his hobo jungle, coos over his tame rat, prattles on about Life. Her snobbish parents and his tougher fellow tramps whip up, between them, some lurid melodrama, but nothing that a final curtain can't cure...
...Shanghai Gesture (Pressburger; United Artists) is a film perversion of Playwright John Colton's flaming melodrama of 16 years ago. Most of its original bawdy plot, language, atmosphere and characterization has been removed. Mother Goddam (Florence Reed in the stage version) is now Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson), no longer proprietress of a Chinese bawdy house, but of a gambling casino. As such, she is not sinister but gaudy. So is the pretentious picture...
...Paris Calling likely to. A melodrama of espionage and counterespionage, its title is the password of a secret shortwave radio station, over which Miss Bergner sends information by piano for decoding in England. Miss Bergner plays second fiddle to a gadgety plot which seldom gives her a chance. When it does, she is artful and pleasing. But melodrama is no frame for her childlike, tragicomic quality...