Word: melodrama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...incidentals are the best of all. Faced with scores of temptations to slip into patches or melodrama, the script escapes nimbly every time. Bits like the execution of a priest and the shooting game of the drunken German commandant acquire a power above their importance to the story...
...kind of moral duel between cynicism at its most brutal and idealism at its most impassioned. Both themes suit the stage, neither quite fills it, and Montserrat has been fattened up by giving the six pawns in the game their grim, gaudy exit scenes as people. As melodrama, Montserrat, though sometimes talky, is oftener tense. As writing, it has much of Adapter Hellman's sharpness and bite: in particular, her villain (well-played by Emlyn Williams) brings a fine sardonic gusto to his villainies...
Tokyo Joe (Columbia) is a seedy melodrama jerry-built from bits & pieces of half a dozen old Humphrey Bogart thrillers. The movie's weary, grey air is due to its stolid dependence on what has become a Bogart stencil; as a scowling rebel who just wants to be left alone by laws, red tape and good works, half-villain Hero Bogart is repeatedly maneuvered by his better nature into warring against evil. In his recent Key Largo, the malevolent-browed hero blocked the return of Capone-style gangsterism to the U.S., and in the soon-to-be-released Chain...
From first to last J. Arthur Rank's "Scott of the Antarctic" is a melodrama--in the most favorable sense of the word. It tells the story of Captain Robert Scott's last expedition in 1908 into the Antarctic waste. There are scenes in the film which establish the personal relationships of the five men who make the desperate final dash to the South Pole. Far more important than these relationships, however, is the common purpose of the men to reach the Pole before Amundsen, and to return before the setting of the sun brings the winter blizzards...
...Scott of the Antarctic" is a rare example of the triumph of honest melodrama--a film which faithfully records the melodrama of actual events. There is no toying with spectacular effects, no falsely dramatic sequences. As a result, the natural spectacle of the Antarctic and the genuine drama of Scott's struggle against it come through with clarity and power...