Word: melodrama
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Sometimes, it is Germanically heavy with melodrama. "Writing is a sweet and wonderful reward," he writes Max Brod in 1922, "but for what? In the night it became clear to me, as clear as a child's lesson book, that it is the reward for serving the devil. This descent to the dark powers, this unshackling of spirits...
...skillful cast saturates the evening with menace, mockery, melodrama and some one-on-one macho on a night-lit basketball court that brings the two men closer to each other than they have ever been to their wives...
Even so, the movie is likely to garner attention - largely because it delves so deeply into the Hollywood Babylon. Scandal animates every scene, and, according to the standards of the time, over heated melodrama becomes the order of the day. Pop Singer Michelle Phillips, for example, plays Natacha Rambova, Valentino's culturally aspiring second wife, as if she were trying out for a school play that unaccountably contains a nude love scene...
Unfortunately, Bertolucci's grand theatrics are of limited use when 1900 's second half devolves into good-guys v. bad-guys melodrama. Major characters who do not fit precisely into the director's polarized political scheme (notably the weak patrician liberals played by De Niro and Dominique Sanda) fade out as the film's narrative gives way to propagandistic pageant. Crucial scenes that might resolve the script's tortuous human relationships never materialize. By the time 1900 reaches its flag-wav ing Liberation Day climax, the sloganeering and confusion are almost unbearable. Even then...
...Circuit Court Judge Paul Baker has warned Rubin to stick to defending his client instead of indicting fictional melodrama. Counters Rubin: "It is inevitable that TV will be a defendant. I intend to put television on trial...