Word: melodrama
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...editorializes--the coming of sound after all did not represent a general disintegration of quality for more than four or five years. And the organization by subject leads to the inclusion of material which over-represents Brownlow's personal proclivities regardless of objective importance. For example, "The Curse of Melodrama" degenerates into Brownlow's none-too-enlightened theories about hateful genre succeeding at the expense of blessed naturalism...
...girls will not wear armbands this year as they did during the last hunger strike. This year's demonstration has done away with "a lot of the connotations of melodrama," Miss Ross said...
...many of his previous films-notably Accident and The Servant-Losey has shown skill at conjuring up corruption and terror. Here he is undone by his scenarist, George Tabori, who attempts a ghostly esthetic melodrama in the style of Henry James. Tabori provides all of the mannerisms of the master, but brings none of his talent to the task. Nor is Losey much aided by his actors. Farrow continues to radiate a fragile elegance and a shrewd sense of character and timing. But she alone cannot make a movie...
...standing offer to throw the championship fight in return for the commutation of his jail sentence. Broody, badgered and in a kind of psychic agony, he finally turns on his white woman as the symbol of all his woes and throws her out. In a sequence of tear-jerking melodrama rather than honest emotional power, she commits suicide. Cowed and crushed, Jefferson accedes to his arranged defeat in Havana...
Taking on an Allen Drury political melodrama is like harpooning a blimp at three feet. It is not only impossible to miss, but every thrust is likely to be fatal. To begin with, there is the dreary genre itself-a peek-into-the-future theme that titillates with dark allusions to the present. Then there are Drury's characters, a confusion of ideological wind-up toys carelessly slapped down to accommodate the easily distracted. There are the plots that are not plots but crisis situations on "which each character is obliged to comment, regardless of the triviality...