Word: melodrama
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While Miracle of Fatima is a special attempt to capitalize on Roman Catholic movie-goers, it also represents this current trend in religious pictures: It tries to "sell" a religious theme by sensationalizing it (as "Spectacular," "Staggering," "Breathtaking"), and disguises some tired melodrama with a fresh set of symbols...
...McLain (Wayne-Fellows; Warner) starts off with a documentary sequence of the House Un-American Activities Committee in session in Washington, D.C. From there, the picture goes on to some wildly fanciful movie melodrama. Big Jim McLain (John Wayne) and his partner (James Arness) are committee investigators assigned to dig up evidence about a Communist spy ring in Hawaii. Investigator Arness, who wants to destroy the ring by beating up the Reds every time he sights one, gets killed. Wayne, who takes on eight Communists singlehanded in a free-for-all, has to be rescued by the island police...
More successful than the rather floridly filmed drama and melodrama of these three is the comedy of two other episodes. The Cop and the Anthem wisely casts Charles Laughton as a dapper old bum who unsuccessfully tries to get himself locked up in a warm jail for the winter. A burlesqued version of The Ransom of Red Chief presents Fred Allen and Oscar Levant as dour confidence men who, after making the mistake of kidnaping a little monster of a hillbilly boy, finally pay his parents a reward for taking him off their hands. Sample dialogue (strictly not O. Henry...
John Steinbeck, now 50, has run a wobbly literary path for nearly a quarter of a century. Signposts along the way read: charming sentimentality (Tortilla Flat), left-wing melodrama (In Dubious Battle), maudlin blather (Of Mice and Men), tender innocence (The Red Pony), honest social indignation (Grapes of Wrath), meretricious sex (The Wayward Bus). His latest novel, East of Eden, comes under none of these labels, although it courts most of them for long stretches...
Skill & Stickiness. Perhaps Steinbeck should have stuck to his original idea of telling just the family history. As it stands. East of Eden is a huge grab bag in which pointlessness and preposterous melodrama pop up as frequently as good storytelling and plausible conduct. Cathy's story, gamy, lurid, and told at tedious length, is all but meaningless. Almost as tiresome is the figure of Lee, the Trasks' trusted Chinese houseman, whose warmed-over Oriental wisdom and too gentle heart give the whole California story an overdose of stickiness...