Word: realism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...addition to on equivocal appraisal of Prohibition, it said. "Side by side with . . . misery and idleness, there are warehouses bursting with goods . . . ; breadlines; . . . jobless men; money in abundance. . . . The conception of society as made up of autonomous independent individuals ... is as faulty from the point of view of economic realism as it is from the standpoint of Christian idealism. Our traditional philosophy of rugged individualism must be modified...
...climax in a debauch at a back-country roadhouse. Before the Manhattan premiere, the U. S. subsidiary of Tobis offered prizes for a 300-word synopsis of The Brothers Karamazov. The melodrama of Karamazov, for a German spectator, is sound and exciting and far more valuable than the apologetic realism of the cinema which might be considered its U. S. counterpart, An American Tragedy. Good shot: Dmitri Karamazov (Fritz Kortner) laughing, when he finds Gruschenka (Anna Sten) at the roadhouse, so loud that everyone else in the place laughs also...
...tinged by pessimism, marries her with love but some reluctance when her brother turns her out for coming home late. The picture, derived from Vina Delmar's best seller in 1928, might have been chilled by the sententious attitude with which cinema often apologizes for its attempts at realism. Instead, it is as intimate as the gossip on a fire-escape, as interesting as a secret. Director Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven) gave the story just the treatment it needed to make its developments seem as important as though they had happened to people whom you know - as, in outline...
...Alfred Neumann-Knopf ($2.50). You frequently hear post-War literature criticized for being ugly, brutal, bereft of nobility. Many a novel of contemporary Germany can be tarred with this stick. But Herr Neumann's psychological epic, his portrait of a modern hero, while it is compact of journalistic realism, is neither ugly, brutal, nor ignoble. Neumann has translated old virtues into modern terms, but their values remain...
...scholar, Ghost Man James knows how to link antiquity and horror: many of his spooks are harmlessly buried till a blundering antiquarian stirs them up. If the meddler survives, his invariable rule thereafter is to let sleeping ghosts lie. James sets the scenes of his stories with cunning realism, hearty plausibility; he never needs Bohemia or Walpurgis Night. Imperceptibly the shades thicken; something (it might be a rat) scuffles in a corner; something (it might be the wind) puffs out the curtains; and then...