Word: melodrama
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...With a Cloak (MGM) is a slow but tolerable melodrama, set in 1848 Manhattan, about a velvet-gloved struggle between good & evil forces for the wealth of a dying reprobate (Louis Calhern). Leslie (An American in Paris) Caron, playing a sweet young thing sent from Paris by the old man's grandson, wants the money for the cause of the French Republic. His calculating housekeeper-mistress (Barbara Stanwyck) wants him to die in a hurry while she is still favored in his will...
...With a Cloak comes equipped vith engaging accessories: talented players, notably Actor Calhern, bright spots of drawing-room dialogue and the atmosphere of a period and locale seldom pictured on the screen. While distinguishing the movie from run-of-the-melodrama, these virtues do not quite offset the slackness and familiarity of its plot...
Donald Dame, as the deceived profligate Eisenstein, sang and spoke his lines with all the exaggerated melodrama which his part requires. Eisenstein is in turn a libertine, cuckold, prisoner, and judge, and Dame's versatility made each characterization convincing...
...Kind of Woman (RKO) is a somewhat lumpy blend of slapstick comedy and dead-serious melodrama. Gambler Robert Mitchum, after being alternately wooed and walloped by gangsters, finds himself in an isolated Mexican resort trying to cope with a plot that defies analysis. While awaiting the arrival of the criminal mastermind (Raymond Burr), Mitchum patches up a newlyweds' quarrel; exchanges terse dialogue and melting looks with bosomy Jane Russell; plays straight man for Vincent Price, a hammy Hollywood star...
...Call of the Blood, when it was shown in 1920, puffed Ivor into a fullblown matinee craze, and The Rat, a melodrama which Ivor wrote, produced and starred in, made him a leading figure on the stage as well. Glamorous Night, the first Novello musical (in which he also starred), was a huge hit. The Dancing Years, his fourth musical, ran for ten years. Ivor composed seven musicals before he was through, all beautifully decorated and loaded with the brisk tunes and languid ballads that Britons had learned to expect...