Word: trite
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...commissioned him to do their portraits, he painted them, not as they would like to look, but as they really were: droopy, anemic cuckolds, smug gangsters, smirking strumpets. He etched bloated priests abusing women and embracing money bags, barely escaped the ire of the Inquisition by labeling them with trite moral maxims. On the walls of churches he gave angels the faces of well-known prostitutes, growling as he did so: "I will cause the faithful to worship vice." He painted bag-bellied Queen Maria Luisa as a superannuated barmaid, made her portraits glow with the oily iridescence of decay...
Amorous waywardness is always trite enough in outline, but life usually fills in the outlines with subtle erotic shadings. So does Molnar. Edna Best is so plumply and seductively feminine as the wife that her unwanted virtue seems a shame. Jay Fassett, the heavy and harassed husband, is a fine figure of a man. But the show is nearly stolen by Harry Gribbon, a former Keystone cop, carrying on as a police officer. In the end Molnar the craftsman almost triumphs over Molnar the trifler's failings...
...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...