Word: melodrama
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Calcutta (Paramount) is a conventional, well-made melodrama about two U.S. airmen (Alan Ladd, William Eendix) who undertake to find out who killed their best friend, and why. In the course of finding out, Ladd and the dead man's sweetheart (Gail Russell) make uneasy but interested eyes at each other. There is some effective singing in a nightclub (by June Duprez), such side dishes of menace as a suspect gentleman in a turban, and some reasonably exciting mayhem in a pitch dark hangar. Gradually the investigators realize that they have unwittingly been flying the Hump for a gang...
Until this film loses control in pure melodrama it is one of the best pictures of the year-a frank and intelligent drama, powerfully directed and beautifully played. The true subtleties of classroom torture, as distinct from the simple brutalities, have never before been shown on the screen with such penetration. But about midway, Torment goes into double focus. What began so firmly, with such compassionate reality, becomes embroiled in mere horror-melodrama. In the long run, by trying to handle two things at once, the picture loses its grip on both...
...James Mason and the city of Belfast co-star in Carol Reed's brilliant, uneven allegorical melodrama about a fugitive killer and the people he meets (TIME, March...
...Eagle Has Two Heads (translated from the French of Jean Cocteau by Ronald Duncan; produced by John C. Wilson) and, what's more remarkable, flies backwards. Famed French Avant-Gardist Cocteau's "romantic melodrama" is outdated purple-&-plush palace theatrics, which starts off with a poet-revolutionist plunging through a window into the royal boudoir, and winds up with a dying queen toppling headlong down a vast flight of stairs...
...James Mason and the city of Belfast co-star in Carol Reed's brilliant, uneven allegorical melodrama (TIME, March...