Word: melodrama
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...world premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors on the largest TV hookup (35 stations) that NBC has ever strung together for opera. Like most Menotti works, Amahl is a one-man show-music, libretto and stage direction by the composer. The story is a simple Menotti mixture of melodrama and pathos, with more than enough invention to fill out 50 minutes...
...Director Sidney Lumet, 27. As ex-actors (Lumet was a child player in the 1935 Broadway hit, Dead End), they are more interested in character than plot, and Danger is chiefly distinguished for fine camera work, the haunting theme music of Guitarist Tony Mottola, and a leaning toward psychological melodrama. Disconcerted by the response to The Lady on the Rock, Russell & Lumet may call a halt to further experiments in realism, get back in the groove with the uncomplicated mayhem and murder that are the staple of TV's suspense shows...
...Strange Door (Universal-International), remotely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, The Sire de Maletroit's Door, is a creaky costume melodrama that lets Charles Laughton wallow in villainy up to his ample jowls. The film itself is puerile stuff. But Actor Laughton, who slices his ham with stylish zest, makes it fun to watch whenever he looms into sight...
Making up for her neglect of A'ida, Maggie Webster spent hours with score and libretto, and decided that there was more to it than mere heart-warming and blood-tingling melodrama-more than "Love, Jealousy and Sacrifice in capital letters." As in Don Carlo, she found in Aïda the "tragedy of individuals caught up in a conflict with the dictates of an autocracy." She also decided to start fresh with her stage direction, and not delve into the "encrustations of tradition...
...Mervyn (Anthony Adverse) LeRoy rely on these circuses to keep their audience diverted from sterner matters. For all the majesty of the theme and magnificence of the trimmings, the story of Quo Vadis, based on Henryk Sienkiewicz' 1895 novel, never rises much above the level of a good melodrama...