Word: melodramas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Holocaust is necessarily rooted in the conventions of melodrama, it is sophisticated in its approach to the history it covers; Green does not miss too many angles. He dramatizes the special anti-Semitic character of Hitler's policies, but also shows that many non-Jews were victims of German genocide. He depicts those Jews who went quietly to the slaughter as well as those who tried to resist. He reminds the audience that a few Jews even curried favor with their German captors and that the Allied powers (the U.S. included) stood idly by as evidence of the Holocaust...
...major weakness of the production, however, lies in the directors' apparent inability to decide whether to play up or defuse the melodrama written into Ten Little Indians. Even allowing for what seemed to be a fairly lighthearted audience, the amount of laughter punctuating some of the most serious scenes makes for lags in suspense that mar an otherwise fine production. The laughter may in part be attributed to an outdated play, but the responsibility for staging the play's ending obviously belongs to the directors, and that ending falls very flat. It is simply too long and too overacted. Because...
...colorful but ultimately threadbare tapestry of rural America, in which the CB substitutes for drab reality. By showing the murky side of CB broadcasts, Demme implicitly criticizes an American ideology which necessitates the use of CB as an outlet for frustration and loneliness. Too bad Demme turns tragedy into melodrama so that his film succeeds only on the level of frivolous entertainment...
...goes. Ordinary, likable people persistently misunderstand themselves, their needs and desires, and there fore misunderstand their equally befuddled neighbors. In the hands of someone other than Tacchella, all of this might be the stuff of tragedy, or at least of psychoanalytic melodrama. But Tacchella seems to be convinced that eccentricity is the best measure of our humanity, some thing to be treasured and explored rather than deplored. His way is simply to record in quick sketches each little absurdity his camera catches, give a rueful Gallic shrug and move briskly on. If such a thing is possible, he is profoundly...
...industrial melodrama, a product not known to sell many tickets, the thing starts out simply enough: Loren Hardeman Sr., 86, founder of the Bethlehem Motor Co. back in the heroic days of car manufacturing, is tired of vegetating down in Florida. He wants to make his comeback by manufacturing "the Betsy," a sort of Model T cum Volkswagen for the '70s, ecologically sound, energy conserving, sensible. He hires a stud race-car driver, one Angelo Perino (Tommy Lee Jones), to honcho the project back at the factory, sneaking it by Loren Hardeman III, the old man's grandson...