SENTIMENTALITY and melodrama are frequent partners in crime. The sentimental comedy or drama (depending on the ending) jerks tears; melodrama, always ending happily, thrives on chills and suspense. How does one marry the two? By taking, say, a poor but honest orphan girl, and exposing her to the machinations of a villain or villains: will she succumb or escape, yield or be rescued? This was the stuff of D. W. Griffith and his many legatees.
Nowadays, though melodrama continues to thrive, sentimentality is no longer a staple. Done in partly by greater sexual freedom, partly by pop psychology—the two combining to make virtue and vice less clear-cut matters—sentimentality has been replaced by spurious sophistication. What makes The Spitfire Grill noteworthy is its attempt to turn back the clock. It is surely no accident that its writer-director, Lee David Zlotoff, comes from television, that newish medium where ancient forms survive best. Nonstop mass entertainment postulates plunder of the past.
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