Word: melodrama
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...does not know, and Laura's restless brother Tom, try to escape their cul-de-sac, and help one another out of it, in every way they can. Uniquely, perhaps, among Tennessee Williams' major works, this one has no dominating masculine figure to bring it to an explosion of melodrama. "Because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material," the author says of it, "atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part." John Hancock, who directed the current production, has worked scrupulously and to beautiful effect with everyone concerned...
...Challenge (NBC, Sat. 8:30-9:00 p.m., E.D.T.) is "not a science-fiction series and not a documentary," says its producer, and he is only too right. Challenge is a mixture of some of the trappings of modern engineering and the tedious cliches of old-fashioned melodrama. Theoretically, the show deals with a Government scientist (George Nader) studying the limits of human endurance in dangerous situations. Actually, it presents such high-flown nonsense as a story of top-rank researchers sitting out a nuclear war in an atomic submarine and suddenly tumbling to some old problems such...
...face of it, this is a hospital novel that makes the most of medical melodrama. But it is as far removed from the usual scalpel-and-suture bestseller as a book on home remedies is from Gray's Anatomy, and it won the choicest collection of British reviews achieved by any book in 1958. Said the Times Literary Supplement: "The book exercises a complete fascination." Said the Irish Times: "Quite possibly a masterpiece." Despite the sometimes awesome gulf that separates British and U.S. tastes, U.S. readers are likely to find themselves agreeing with these judgments of The Rack...
...illustrating this text, Bergman wobbles between drama and melodrama, alternates genuine horrors with sham tricks, comic sex with serious sex, and poetry with lampoon. Result is that The Magician is perhaps his least successful film so far. But for every murky symbol, there is a sharp physical image: footsteps become important, a thunderclap almost too real, and shafts of light through the mist startlingly beautiful. With the help of this brilliant graphic technique, a haunting guitar score, and the talented stock company of players who have turned up in all recent Bergman films. The Magician manages to fascinate...
Anatomy of a Murder. Producer-Director Otto Preminger's effective courtroom melodrama that seems less concerned with murder than with anatomy. James Stewart is the lawyer and Lee Remick the defendant's inviting wife, in a court whose memorable presiding judge is famed Boston Lawyer Joseph N. Welch...