Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Rose Marie (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is based on the sound assumption that cinemaudiences will pay little attention to plot and trimmings if they can hear Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in full voice. To this end, Rose Marie producers resurrected the highly successful operetta of 1924, added some new songs, framed it in magnificent scenery, let the two leads shift for themselves. Acting with considerable charm, and bursting frequently into song in the midst of Canadian wilds, Miss MacDonald and Mr. Eddy should provoke an even greater box-office triumph than by their first effort, Naughty Marietta. Marie de Flor...
Fixed Locale; Moving Plot...
...plot moves fast in the development of character and in the tautening of dramatic strains, but in locale it stays put on the edge of the great Arizona desert. Leslie Howard, an effete poet who believes himself an anachronism, a petrified stump i the midst of a petrified forest, comes upon a little bar-b-q roadhouse, the scene of all the action. There he finds Bette Davis, who confesses with an air of braggadocio passing for humility that she is nothing but a desert rat. At the same time she cannot forget that she is half French because...
...then they've done some curious things to the good old mellow plot. For one thing, the craze for tracing the life cycle of an opera singer has caught this picture, and Jeanette, before and after wandering about the great Canadian woods, does such things as French operatic versions of "Romeo and Juliet." There are also such incidents as the surprise appearance of large crowds to applaud private performances, and gum-chewing piano pounders telling outraged song birds to get hot, Toots, and compete with ladies who sing with their hips. These devices are strongly reminiscent of a young woman...
...plot of this latest release is weak in many places. The trailer announcing it was perfectly fair in promising that only the detective know the answer to the questions presented. The audience was able to pick out the logical villain but even the denouement at the end is almost entirely disconnected from the evidence in the proceeding scenes. Chan is also spoiling the use of Chinese proverbs as a means of building character interest and is using fourth-rate ones in the present case. The minor roles, except for Herbert Mundin who plays the part of Baxter, the butler...