Word: plotting
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Typical Abdul-Wahab screen plot: a poor fellah (peasant), desperately in love with a rich man's daughter, realizes the futility of his situation, sings a few tragic songs, commits suicide...
Although it includes no outstanding dramatic triumphs and is possessed of no extraordinary artistic merits, "The Young in Heart" provides good entertainment. This is probably because of its pleasant lack of realism in both plot and presentation. The story, which concerns an engaging family of rogues and social parasites who are reformed to solid citizenship by the love of a Little Old Lady, is one of those amusing fairy-tales which adults like to believe...
...regards acting, the honors are all Von Stroheim's. The former stormy petrol of Hollywood has in exile created a far greater characterization than ever he did before. His performance would seem to be the one great thing of "Grand Illusion." Although neither plot, treatment, direction, or his fellow actors maintain the superbly high standard that Von Stroheim sets, the picture is far above average...
...Thornton Wilder on a lark. The play, like the word, is rather out-of-date: Wilder has rewritten an old Viennese farce with no thought of streamlining it. The scene of The Merchant of Yonkers is Manhattan in the '80s. but old as the European theatre is the plot of the sweated apprentices who sneak off for a holiday, of their miserly old master (Percy Waram) on the hunt for a wife, and of the obliging Mrs. Fixit (Jane Cowl) who fixes things to suit herself. The slapstick is the same that, 200 years ago. drew tears of laughter...
Unfortunately in the last two acts the careless laughter begins to sound more like an old maid's skittish giggle. The characters become a little giddy, the author turns a little cute, the plot turns a little silly, and Director Max Reinhardt's German sense of gaiety turns alarmingly roguish. But the wonder is not that Wilder's old horse finally breaks down. The wonder is that it trots so gaily, canters so jauntily, for as long as it does...