Word: melodrama
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Moreover, this reinforces the fact that O'Casey's true genius is comic, that his tragedy-save perhaps in The Plough and the Stars-verges on sentimentality or melodrama. It is laughter that really soars in Red Roses, not feeling or poetry. The verbal gifts are there. But too often they miss magic by striving for it, or seem almost to be spoofing the Irish love of words. But where Synge, in The Playboy, could spoof that love and in the very process make prose beautiful, a more reflective O'Casey mingles honest rhythms with gaudy ones...
...speech, like most of the important ones in this clever melodrama, does not quite carry the intended conviction. The trouble seems to be that Bridget Boland, who wrote the script as well as the play (a hit in London) on which it is based, has perhaps not thought long enough about what makes people weak or strong, bad or good, split or whole. The interrogator in the picture has the resources of the state at his command. At no point, however, does the cardinal seem to get any help from the spiritual realm-indeed, there is little evidence that...
...miscues, to his humiliation before a Senate investigating committee. Author David Davidson struck boldly through the tangled swamp known as Conflict of Interest, but not even yeoman work by Melvyn Douglas and Ed Begley could make the main issues clear. Climax! starred Michael Rennie in Man of Taste, a melodrama about an art dealer who had a method for improving the price on his artists' paintings-he simply killed them off after they had done enough canvases to give him a comfortable backlog. Like most such rogues, Rennie seemed far too intelligent to have been caught at his crimes...
...Love Rides the Rails" is basically a melodrama and its plot somewhat resembles that of "The Golden Fleecer." The action centers around two swindlers who come to a small town and try to extract some railroad rights from a widow and her daughter. The two women fight back, and with the aid of the daughter's boy friend, are eventually successful in ridding the town of the crooks...
Despite all of its faults, The Great Sebastians might still be made into an amusing comedy if Lindsay and Crouse were to revise it extensively, especially in the first act, so as to place more emphasis on humor and less on melodrama. Past experience seems to indicate that any play starring the Lunts has a chance to become a hit. The authors should not be content, however, to let their stars reputations draw the crowds...