Word: melodramas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Pygmalion, are rarely performed. Conversely, scarcely a season passes when the overestimated Saint Joan and Candida do not show up on some theater's docket. One could hardly underestimate The Devil's Disciple. Shaw himself thought that this 1897 play would eventually be considered a "threadbare popular melodrama...
...fulfillment in politics. When the oppression and tyranny of his father's rule is brought to his attention, he becomes outraged and swears to foment a revolution. With a jarring suddenness, Pippin stabs his father in the back and sings to a new day, turning the comedy into a melodrama for the moment...
Sometimes, it is Germanically heavy with melodrama. "Writing is a sweet and wonderful reward," he writes Max Brod in 1922, "but for what? In the night it became clear to me, as clear as a child's lesson book, that it is the reward for serving the devil. This descent to the dark powers, this unshackling of spirits...
...skillful cast saturates the evening with menace, mockery, melodrama and some one-on-one macho on a night-lit basketball court that brings the two men closer to each other than they have ever been to their wives...
Unfortunately, Bertolucci's grand theatrics are of limited use when 1900 's second half devolves into good-guys v. bad-guys melodrama. Major characters who do not fit precisely into the director's polarized political scheme (notably the weak patrician liberals played by De Niro and Dominique Sanda) fade out as the film's narrative gives way to propagandistic pageant. Crucial scenes that might resolve the script's tortuous human relationships never materialize. By the time 1900 reaches its flag-wav ing Liberation Day climax, the sloganeering and confusion are almost unbearable. Even then...