Word: slapsticking
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Movement of emotions, play of ideas, and a succession of delicately worked out situations, held the interest of an audience which must have been far more familiar with the more common and more obvious elements of rough, slapstick comedy, blood-and-thunder melodrama, and mawkishly sentimental love tales. "A Month in the Country" is an evening of quiet. One cannot laugh often, but one is forced to smile frequently. One does not sit on the edge of his chair, but, on the other hand, neither does one drowse...
...given her for her work in bit-parts (TIME, July 28), has now kept on making bit-parts out of roles in which she was supposed to star. How well Min and Bill will register in its present form remains questionable, although it is fortified by long sequences of slapstick such as a six-minute fight in which Min hits Bill with a variety of objects, including porcelain bedroom utensils. Best acting: Dorothy Jordan as the girl whom Miss Dressier has taken care of since her mother, a prostitute in the next town, left her in the boarding house...
...Life of the Party (Warner). People who feel humiliated when they find themselves laughing at comedy which bases its appeal on noise, cheap wisecracks, furniture smashing, the loss of trousers and similar devices will not enjoy The Life of the Party. It is a slapstick feature with Winnie Lightner and Irene Delroy as a pair of golddiggers who are discharged from a music store, raid a dressmaking establishment, and go to Havana looking for kind old men. It is stupid stuff, yet funny. Best line: a horse-racing Colonel (Charles Butterworth), seeing his entry turn around and run the wrong...
...NATIVE-Jack Oakie, the backbone of a slapstick frame dressed up with one or two gay songs...
What a Widow (United Artists). This is a violent attempt to rouse laughter by an expenditure of physical energy. The attempt is a failure. One is surprised at first to see a film star so securely established as Gloria Swanson engaging in furious slapstick, but after the novelty has worn off the humor also disappears...