"LA BOHEME,"

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19446, 20 October 1928, Page 11

"LA BOHEME,"

LILIAN GISH AS PUCCINI'S MIMI. It' Is the most difficult fhing in the world of the theatre to transpose a grand opera to the screen. Not because grand opera relies mostly .upon its score,, and leaves the libretto to itself, but because people in general have a mistaken idea that grand opera is not very entertaining, and it is hard to impress upon them that it'can often be, and nearly always is, quite attractive and interesting from the viewpoint of romance and the like. It is generally agreed that Puccini's La Boheme," invariably known in these parts as "The Bohemian Girl," tells the sweetest love story of the grand opera stage, has entrancing music, and an element of pathos .so indissolubly woven among its lightness, romance, and tvpically Bohemian atmobphere that the bouquet it offers has every flower in the garden of romance. M La Scheme'* will open a season at the ■ Gfand Theatre next week with a cast of exceedingly popular players,' headed by # Lilian Gish as the frail and affectionate Mimi, John Gilbert as the robust Rodolphe, and Renee Adoree as Musette. The players have been guided by King Vidor, and the picture is the best- picture yet to capture faithfully the real atmosphere of the famous Latin Quarter of Paris. Puccini's opera li3S been left intact by the screen, which is something to be devoutly grateful for. How tempting it might have been to send Mimi away after that last pathetic letter, perhaps into some warmer clime, and bring 1 her back at the end a blooming maiden with red cheeks. How simple to make the naive Rodolphe a more understanding fellow, who could read between the lines of an editor's letter! For Rodolphe was a poet that no publisher could recognise, and Mimi was a seamstress with an apparently endless flow of francs. "La Boheme" is just like life, a little, tragic, a little humorous, very ironic, but always very full, and very fascinating. Puccini made it so, and King Vidor has left it so, and with the orchestra playing the. well-known and haunting airs, and with thp magic screen revealing scene after scene of Bohemian revelry and | irresponsibility, it is no easy matter to , realise that.it is the picture theatre, and not i the legitimate theatre, that, is presenting this ; "La Boheme." "Thy. tiny hand is frozen," j murmurs Rodolphe, and the strains of that I most emotional melody come to mind, with the cold winds blowing, and the students sing- ! ing and carousing, and Mimi sewing and coughing. To begin with, there was excellent material here, every angle of the dramatist's art, and with Lilian Gish as Mimi, and Gilbert as-Rod.olphe, it would have been strange indeed were Vidor's "La Boheme" not one of the best versions ever done. Roy D'Arcy does a neat bit as a cynical boulevardier with an eye 011 Mimi, while Edward Everett .Horton and Karl Dane provide a few laughs as a couple of comio students. Mies Lilian Hanham, the brilliant young Christchurch soprano, has been ■ engaged to sing Musstta'a 'Waltz Song" from- the Puccini opera. Box plans for "La Boheme" are now at The | Bristol Piano Company.