Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...eyes of General Wood, chairman of America First, the play was as brutal as a realistic melodrama, without elevation, without adventure, with all the characters, from the leading man on down, dominated by motives of hard self-interest...
Texas demonstrates the fact that, after 29 years in Hollywood, leathery, hair-shy George Marshall (Destry Rides Again) has no superior in the business of making Westerns. It is also a prize exhibit of what can be done with the tried-&-true Western formula when its melodrama and cliches are informed by humor and a straight...
Although everything turns out all right (the spy ring is smashed; Brent and his blonde captive will live a better life together after the war), International Lady is more effective as a warning to Americans to beware of wealthy Long Island fifth columnists than as a creepy spy melodrama. Unintentionally funny shot: Detective Rathbone, disguised as a mustachioed butler, looking like a cross between a caricature of himself and a blond Groucho Marx...
...action. Although Cameraman George Barnes does his cinematic best to focus the story through his lens, his range is restricted mostly to devising new angles and lighting for the same old people in the same old room. He makes a noble attempt. The atmosphere of Retirement is all melodrama and a moor wide...
...attempt to sell a bill of indictment of small-time capitalism along with its astringent drama does not come off so well. The characters are so clearly black or white that they are too vivid for real life. But this does not keep a Southern lady's melodrama, aided and abetted by Gregg Toland's talented camera craft, from being a memorable portrait of greed. Regina and her wretched relatives possess the fascination of rattlesnakes courting in a bathtub...