Word: melodrama
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Some of you may have thought that the Nineteenth Century mortgage melodrama was dead, but if so, you have sadly underestimated Hollywood's talent for reincarnation. "In "The Girl from Mauhattan," the second picture at the Pilgrim, the mortgage foreclosure appears with all its hideous threats and Dorothy Lamour as the hapless victim. But a few enticing twists have been added. The villain doing the foreclosing is, of all things, a church looking for a new site, and the hero is an all-American fullback turned minister. Dorothy Lamour, Charles Laughton, and George Montgomery are all involved in this hideous...
...Knife" is first-class melodrama, a thing that turns up too infrequently. After a poor opening scene, the situation becomes engrossing and before the end the spectator is likely to be on the edge of his seat. The ending itself is in the best Odets fashion and couldn't have been more powerful had Leo the lion devoured the hero on stage. If Mr. Odets primary purpose was to expose, in his own way, the minds that govern the film industry, he has succeeded. Marcus Hoff, of Hoff Interprises, and his henchman, very ably played by J. Edward Bromberg...
...Violence (M-G-M), a realistic, tight-knit study in fear, hatred and revenge, is a well-made movie melodrama. Director Fred (The Search) Zinneman, who gets as much power out of his lens as if it were a fire-hose nozzle, deals this time with a deadly game of hide & seek. The fugitive is an ex-bomber pilot (Van Heflin) who once betrayed a group of fellow prisoners to curry favor and food in a Ger man prison camp. Stalking him with a maniacal single-mindedness is Bombardier Robert Ryan, the only survivor...
Except for the paper-thin figure of Ernestina, the novel abounds with brilliantly sketched characters. The prose is bright and economical, and its story is peppered with helpful melodrama. A year and a half ago Author Davidson published The Steeper Cliff, a fine first novel. In The Hour of Truth, he has cleared that dangerous hurdle, the second...
Habsburg Horrors. Mayerling, in Author Lonyay's account, was merely the last act in a psychopathic melodrama peopled, in its main roles, by deeply inbred Central European royalty. Rudolph's mother's cousin and his dearest friend was the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who drowned himself. Another dear cousin was an Archduke Otto who once scandalized a fashionable restaurant by turning up dressed only in a sword and the necklace of the Order of the Golden Fleece...