Word: realism
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...bosom of Hollywood's plot cartel, J. Arthur Rank has shunned customary procedure in his totally unorthodox presentation of a documentary film. Centered around the historic migration of Australian cattle herds to escape a threatened Japanese invasion, "The Overlanders" becomes experimental by American standards in its complete emphasis on realism without the added appeal of ersatz excitement. Mr. Rank has successfully produced an absorbing, plausible movie and neatly avoids treading on the worn-down heels of contemporary horse operas...
...Eisenstein, the artist, never gives way wholly to Eisenstein, the propagandist. Every movement in it is exciting, but, springing as it does against the tensions of near-standstill, it is exciting as if a corpse moved. Besides restricting motion in his movie, Eisenstein has also fought shy of realism. All of his characters, their faces and their gestures are superhuman rather than human. Most of the action takes place as closely within palace walls as if the cameras had been confined to a theater stage. The lighting, too, is closer to florid Russian theater than to cinema...
...discussing the novel, Kapstein considered it on its merits as a work of art, not as Forster's first book. Forster he pointed out, does not treat his characters in the traditional realism of Dreiser where the hero is trapped by his environment but shows the effect of successful battle against inhibiting surroundings...
...Such realism is a passion with the Grand-Guignol. The stop-at-nothing tradition was established by Founder Max Maurey, who died last week. It was carried on by the late Andre de Lorde, "Le Prince de la Terreur," the man who wrote the two favorite plays and many other Grand-Guignol classics. Says an old De Lorde fan: "He was a mild, sweet little man, always smiling...
Unlike oil and water, symbolism and realism can be mixed-but it takes a skilled hand. Ambitious young Novelist Jean Stafford (Boston Adventure) takes a try at it in her second novel, and doesn't bring it off. In parts The Mountain Lion is beautifully clear-a delicate, sharp story of childhood and adolescence. But it darkens toward the end, and winds up in a desperately contrived coincidence...