Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...other two stories are more effective. The last tale, about an aerialist who dreams of falling and tempts fate by recreating the setting of his fall, is quite intriguing in the circus scenes. But even in 1943, much of the plot and dialogue must have been dated, particularly the fade-out with the hero promising to await the parole of his love, a reformed jewel thief. Charles Boyer, however, is debonair on a tight-rope, though he delivers even the silliest lines with a straight face...
...story taken from Oscar Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" is the best by far. Its success is due to a good plot, some humor in the script, and the presence of pros like Edward G. Robinson, Thomas Mitchell, and C. Aubrey Smith. The brief scene in which the latter extolls the beauty of death while Robinson decides to murder him is a delightful mixture of the macabre and the amusing. But even Robinson, as a man compelled to realize the prophecy of a palmist who sees murder in his hand, gets tiresome in interminable chats with his inner...
Split Second (Edmund Grainger; RKO Radio) seems to be a dramatic chip off Robert Sherwood's 1935 play, The Petrified Forest. It tells of a desperado who holds a group of strangers at gunpoint mercy, but it adds an up-to-date plot switch: the action takes place in a Nevada ghost town located in a restricted testing-ground area where an atom bomb is about...
With its tried & true basic plot, Split Second was bound to work up a certain amount of grim suspense. In addition, Stephen McNally's characterization of the convict is a snarlingly powerful one. But much of the movie's intrinsic excitement is lost in its over-plotting and in the under-direction of Actor Dick Powell in his first directorial...
...Rene's escapades form the main plot. They take her on a quick whirl through reform school, a marathon party with some furloughing G.I.s, a brush with genteel do-gooders, and a near marriage with a U.S. soldier named Hotspot (Hotty for short), which is interrupted by the rude appearance of the cops. But The Joyful Condemned is the sort of novel that lavishly scatters half a dozen subplots and a small army of minor characters. Novelist Tennant tosses in a raucous riot scene in the girls' reformatory, a wild chapter in which two young racketeers...