Word: trite
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...course, biographical pictures of loved figures always tend to be maudlin. But for the first forty minutes director Lloyd Bacon resisted to such trite tricks as courtroom orations and ectoplasmic figures in the stadium, he fumbled badly in showing Rockne the man. This latter part of the picture is endurable solely because it is thoroughly punctuated with some of the best football shots on celluloid, including three defeats of Army, which may be a happy omen...
...Adventuress (20th Century-Fox) is a remake of a French film of the same name and a lively demonstration of what Hollywood experts can sometimes do to make a trite story into a thoroughly entertaining picture. The experts are Producer Darryl F. Zanuck, Associate Producer Nunnally Johnson, Director Gregory Ratoff. The story is about two Continental con men (Erich von Stroheim & Peter Lorre) who work the better resorts and the grander hotels until their lovely confederate, the fake Countess Vronsky (Zorina), falls in love and marries one of their well-to-do victims (Richard Greene). Then they go to work...
...certain extent, but this is not its principal fault. Failure lies in the dialogue, which is often incredibly dull and obvious, and in the mediocrity of acting by Joel McCrea, Queenie Vassar (the grandmother), and Marjorie Rambeau (the mother). Ginger Rogers does well, and adds pictorial value, but trite situations, leading to a particularly obvious conclusion, constantly shine through the veneer and contribute to a dull and disappointing film...
...thing goes. Sounds vaguely like a foxtrot that was told to go South American, met a rhumba on the way and gave up in the middle... Tiger Rag"--this tune has been torn apart for so many years by so many bands, that any version is apt to sound trite. At least however this Krupa version doesn't get out of taste very often and doesn't have any trombone "tiger" growls...
...great deal to do with the way it is played. It is so universally cheapened in the cannonball these days that an accurate performance is become a curiosity. Conductors think that to interpret Tchaikowski means whipping themselves up into a fine poetic frenzy, and loading the music with trite sentimentality. As a result it has sounded cheap and sugar-coated, has rung sour on men's ears, and turned them to music less easily perverted by a conductor's bad taste. It is all very well to invoke the old formulate and say that Tchaikowski wrung sublimity from an anguished...