Word: melodrama
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...kind of newspaper pictured in Scandal Sheet was topical 25 years ago, when the film's plot might also have seemed fresher. Nothing is as dead as yesterday's newspaper, but yesteryear's newspaper melodrama comes close...
...known variously to his students as "the Crock" and "the Himmler of the lower fifth." It is not easy to see how Mr. Rattigan draws his screenplay, derived from a play of his which appeared a couple of years ago, along the narrow, twisting path between the abysses of melodrama and stagnation. But draw it he does, and the resulting picture is a most gratifying and beautifully executed study of character...
...give it genuine shape. Desire emerges as neither realistic drama nor poetic tragedy, but as something clumsily in between. Most of the writing, in a rather stylized dialect as factitious as it is folksy, lacks reverberation. Hence, too much of the action has the quality of mere clodhopper melodrama. The last act is dramatically effective; but the last act, reaching up to the redemptive power of love, should be tragically exalted...
Decision Before Dawn. A semi-documentary spy melodrama on a grand scale, picturing the physical and spiritual chaos of Germany on the eve of defeat in World War II (TIME...
...play currently offered at the Brattle Theatre is neither the best nor the worst play Bernard Shaw has written. It is a typical potpouri of cynicism and moralizing, seasoned with a dash of melodrama and presented with wit and enthusiasm...