Word: melodrama
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...about Carter's understanding of the Federal Government and about his own leadership ability. He apparently intended the mass resignations as a dramatic symbol of a fresh start, as Nixon had done at the beginning of his second term. But Carter's coup de theatre looked more like amateur melodrama. He could have fired the subordinates who displeased him with less trauma and far better effect on his image as an executive. But he nonetheless sought everyone's resignation, apparently not anticipating how the act would be perceived at home and abroad...
...stage is draped in red. Characters float in and out and die while piano rags tinkle soothingly in the background. As in all nightmares, there is no interior logic, just a disembodied series of sketches that provoke mingled horror and impatience at their very disjointedness. For all the melodrama, stabbings, shootings, spurting of blood and impassioned speeches, the play leaves one fundamentally cold. And Frank Wedekind probably wanted it that...
...Polish Gentile who bears on her arm a tattooed number from Auschwitz. Sophie is Nathan's lover, even though he flies into periodic rages and beats her. Stingo falls instantly in love with Sophie and becomes, against his own self-warnings, a "hapless supernumerary in some tortured melodrama...
...what has become something of a Ford tradition, the meeting had its full quotient of melodrama and mania. A woman stockholder fainted at the microphone after nominating Benson for the board. Professional Board Baiter Evelyn Davis, who came in a red plastic fire hat, dismissed the many present and former Ford employees in the audience as "stooges." Through it all, Henry remained the star. He was frequently applauded by Ford loyalists who had come to see the chairman preside at his last such gathering...
...some perverse way Fedora is an entertaining film. It is not cynical. There is a weird charm in its enthusiastic embrace of antique cinematic conventions and, more important, a certain daring in the way the piece is written. Throughout their script Wilder and Diamond are ready to undercut their melodrama in order to make judgments ranging from the sly to the nasty about everything from the way to handle the funerals of world-class celebrities to the way the rest of us allow ourselves to be drawn into their self-created dramas. There is a splendid cheekiness...