Word: melodrama
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...this melodrama is strongly stated, but the performers for the most part (Susan Sarandon as the mother of the king-to-be is an exception) fail to convince us that their Romany roots are more than makeup deep. The folk ceremonies are routinely lusty, the dark familial passions are what we have come to expect in movies about subcultural persistence...
...Classics and Commercials, gives space to only one Shaw: George Bernard Today the Irwin Shaw Show means more than the Irwin Shaw books: Rich Man, Poor Man has eclipsed his previous works and further diminished his literary reputation. That is a mixed curse: the TV miniseries was comic-book melodrama; yet, without its success, this out-of-print collection of collections would probably not have been issued, and a short-story master might have been missed...
...expressing intense emotion and psychological drama on film. Allen emulates Bergman as a student would imitate the master of his craft. The effort, though somewhat over-wrought, like that of a too-careful student, succeeds. A talented cast, well-directed, saves the heavy screenplay from sinking into murky melodrama. Mary Beth Hurt, as the youngest daughter, the one with "all the anguish of an artistic personality without any of the talent," is especially good in her film debut. And Geraldine Page evokes the neurotic woman "too perfect to live in this world" with startling precision...
Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible (Mezzo Irina Arkhipova, Baritone Anatoly Mokrenko, Narrator Boris Morgunov, Ambrosian Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, conductor; Angel; 2 LPs). This oratorio, arranged from Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's two-part Ivan the Terrible film, makes splendid melodrama. Muti conducts a dashing blend of ominous march rhythms, pagan-sounding brass flourishes and pealing Russian bells...
...knockoff. Like Renoir's 1939 film, it offers a moving portrait of a society on the brink of convulsive change. Set just after the 1917 Revolution, the film takes place in pastoral Crimea, where a harried group of actors and moviemakers are trying to complete a frivolous silent melodrama. Hundreds of miles away, the government has fallen to the Bolsheviks, but the film company tries to go doggedly about its business. Inevitably, Slave's characters discover that not even artists can hide from the onrushing forces of history...