Word: melodrama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Althoug it is fairly certain that an audience of Harvard men will criticize the film for its overdone melodrama and its frequent lapses into childish sentimentality, it is none the less true that "Sans Famille" is an interesting story and that the film has a definite entertainment value. Being primarily a human interest story, it succeeds, in some places, in attaining a certain degree of pathos. Typical scenes are that in which Vitalis realizes that the end of his life is near, and that in which Lady Milligan discovers that Remi is none other than her long lost...
Even if "The Old Maid" is not the best play of the year it is certainly an highly absorbing production which is doubly effective because if avoids the pitfalls of melodrama inherent in the plot and grows subtly but directly into an intelligent drama, of human relations...
Despite the patent melodrama of the situation, the film contains bits of excellent acting. Lewis Stone is quite fascinating as the third mate who has lost his nerve. Bullied and despised by the other officers, he is a study in lost confidence and shattered pride...
Robert Benchley as an inebriated traveller is so pleasantly silly that he almost walks off with the movie. He has never been funnier and contributes just the touch needed to make China Seas a swell show instead of a mere tour do force in melodrama...
Barbary Coast (Samuel Goldwyn) is a gaslight and "hoss''-pistol melodrama of San Francisco in the gold-rush days, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, directed by Howard Hawks, acted by Edward G. Robinson, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea. That it somehow fails to justify expectations is due largely to the fact that the story, about an underworld tsar who constitutes himself protector of a lady croupier in his gambling house and then shows that his heart is in the right place by giving her up when she falls in love with a mealy-mouthed young prospector...