Word: epics
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...Eugene O'Neill had thought of it first, the theme of "The Sacred Flame," now at the Peabody Playhouse, would have been tortured into a drama of epic grandcur. It has all the essentials of an O'Neill magnum opus; there's murder, and adultery, and starved sexuality, and problems of passion galore. It might very well have been worked up by America's foremost tragedian into a magnificent scream-fest, with an hour out for supper and a year's run on Broadway...
...epic in the sense that the garish extravagances of DeMille were called epics. Its effects are not won by means of pyromaniac mobs that made D. W. Griffith a god in Hollywood. Rather "Cavalcade" is a drama of family patriotism; and because the finer qualities of an Englishman are the finer qualities of an American it commands the emotions and sympathy of the American audience...
...history of one English family, becomes, by implication, a history, almost a definition, of England. Against its spacious background, the subsidiary stories in Cavalcade have a sharp and eloquent perspective which Director Frank Lloyd emphasized by using, not the fulsome rhetoric with which the cinema usually attempts the epic manner, but a sort of cinematic shorthand. The significance to England of Queen Victoria's death becomes apparent from an incident in the Marryots' kitchen; a shot of a life-preserver-lettered S. S. Titanic-ends, with an abrupt full-stop, the story of Edward Marryot and his bride...
German authors like to give themselves plenty of room. Good German Author Arnold Zweig* herewith puts out the first volume of his War epic. Volumes 2 and 4 (Education before Verdun, The Crowning of a King') are still to come. Volume 3 is the already-published The Case of Sergeant Grischa, one of the few good War books, often compared with the world-best-selling All Quiet on the Western Front, sometimes preferred...
...Conquerors (RKO) is a somewhat editorial epic urging cinemaddicts not to sell the U. S. short. It starts in the post-Civil War Depression, shows Richard Dix and Ann Harding, newly married and in financial straits, setting out for the West. Richard Dix is shot by the Slade Boys. He stops to recover in a Midwest village, settles down there to start a bank and a family. His small son is run over by the first train that goes through the town. His daughter grows up to look a great deal like Ann Harding, marries a teller in the bank...