Word: melodrama
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...proved adept at that as well. A suave addition to Hollywood society, he was briefly engaged to Actress Joanne Woodward; she and Husband Paul Newman are now among his closest friends. His backstage knowledge was only exceeded by his familiarity with backstairs politics. The Best Man, his well-made melodrama about infighting at a political nominating convention, opened on Broadway in 1960 and ran for 520 performances...
...perhaps, President of the U.S. Now a self-assured 13, Jodie Foster wants instead to be "a very good actress," a goal for which she is almost frighteningly well endowed. What hooked her on acting as a career was the movie Taxi Driver (TIME, Feb. 16), a florid melodrama of Manhattan's streets that is mostly memorable for Jodie's portrayal, as to the bordello born, of the trick-wise twelve-year-old whore...
...Virgin and the Gypsy is a cariacture of D. H. Lawrence at his worst--all violent passion and sensuality in lush color without any character development. The only relief in this romantic melodrama comes when a flood washes away the virgin's shrewish grandmother and the entire vile English country estate to our intense delight. Another dull melodrama to be avoided is Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, unless you go for two and a half hour fag jokes in the guise of sympathy and relevance. Al Pacino's acting is excellent but does not overcome the ridiculous role...
...film goes most disastrously wrong when it tries to turn slice-of-life realism into full-scale melodrama. At first it is interesting, and funny, when Travis becomes obsessed with a cool socialite (Cybill Shepherd) who is a campaign worker for a too slick, too vacuous presidential candidate. Their relationship begins with his following her around at a distance, proceeds to his awkward efforts to date her, ends when he takes her to a skin flick. It makes a nice little essay in the confusions of cross-cultural courtship. However, Travis' failure as presented is more farcical than tragic...
...Syndrome, Fussell says, has led to "gross dichotomizing...a persisting imaginative habit of modern times, traceable, it would seem, to the actualities of the Great War." He believes the war led to the habit of simple distinction, simplification and opposition. Here he expands his argument to include "paranoid melodrama," the rumor-mongering, and the civilian/soldier dichotomy associated with the war. This latter argument is particularly convincing, since it shows how press censorship and government propaganda suppressing the grim horrors of war alienated the soldier from civilians...