Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...character. As a result, Wild Waves is chiefly notable for displaying 45 of the most disagreeable people imaginable. There are definitely funny lines and situations, but since the line seems to be the unit of the playwright's thought, Wild Waves is hopelessly muddled as to motivation and plot. The many admirers of Osgood Perkins ( The Front Page, Uncle Vanya, The Wiser They Are) can only hope that he soon gets a better job, of which it would appear he will presently be in need...
...previous elaboration, sometimes dramatic, sometimes melodramatic, on the theme of the scion of two ancient, rich and grotesquely conservative lines (Richard Arlen) who weds a chorine, Daisy (Nancy Carroll), and takes her back to the ancestral mansion. Smooth sequence, good photography, competent acting, have not resuscitated this frail, old plot. The dowager mother (Pauline Frederick), psychopath! cally jealous of her son's affections, willfully twists Daisy's innocent relationship with the family black sheep (John Litel) into a scandal. One night Daisy, lonely and desperate, gets drunk and inadvertently runs away with Litel. Though she immediately returns...
Miss Pennington's spontaneity does not extend to the plot, which seems to an admittedly intolerant Playgoer just another refurbishing of ideas that were old even before "Jack O'Lantern" came to town. Such matter as the old pun about coffe-grounds, or the mix-up taken from O'Henry's "Gifts of the Magi," or the business of loading teacups with sugar-lumps as a sign of abstraction--all these held no charm for the Playgoer, while the very smoothness and finish of the performance depressed him. For as he watched Mr. Shaw's infinitely competent capering, he hoped...
...south-western scenery is splendid, and you should be able to lose yourself very pleasantly in watching it and remembering last summer out west. Ignore the story; watch placidly as the hardriding Mr. O'Brien jumps his canyons, but don't try to bridge the chasms in the plot. This approach will be understood by all true devotees of the primeval horse-opera...
...subjecting this plot to a merciless synopsis, the Playgoer admits that he has exaggerated the element of horror. This element is sufficiently diluted in the actual showing to make more prominent other merits, such as the careful settings, imaginatively done, and the capable photography and camera-angles. There is a consistent tone to the piece, a tone that was lacking in "Frankenstein," with its weakening comedy interludes. The extravagance and absurdity of the plot is somehow reconciled by the opening scene sin the mountebank's tent, which set the key for shivery theatricality. Mirakle, showman that he is, can heap...