CINEMA REVIEWS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21120, 22 March 1934, Page 17

CINEMA REVIEWS

* PLAZA THEATRE There is much in the screen version of "Gallant Lady," the Clive Brook —Ann Harding play, which is showing at the Plaza Theatre, and which has been so successful that it will be continued for another week, lo support the contention that the Americans have learned and profited from the revival of the British film industry. At last they seem to have learned the wisdom of refraining from driving home the obvious, emphasising the pathetic until it becomes absurd, and decorating the "high-spots" untii they weary. In "Gallant Lady," much of this sensibility of treatment must be attributed to the influence of Clive Brook, who, though cast in a strangely negative part, supplies a solid background to the more enlivened acting of Ann Harding. Ann Harding finds good opportunities for polished and expressive acting as a mother separated from her child by the cruel necessities of convention and respectability. The supporting programme includes an amusins and educative bridge film, "Murder at the Bridge Table," with Mr Ely Culbertson as the chief villain, and an ingenious Mickey Mouse cartoon. The whole programme is most enjoyable and well balanced. REGENT THEATRE In "1 Was a Spy." the GaumontBritish film at the Regent Theatre, v.iiie'n will be screened for a second week, the producer. Victor Saville. Nad a basis of fact to work on: but it is his fine, penetrating, constructive imagination that is lo be credited with the success of the drama built upon it. The story is full of thrills, btii is always more than a thriller. Madeleine Carroll plays very sensitively the part of a Belgian girl. Mart lie Cnockacrt, whose pity leads her to accept service in the German military hospital at Roulers. Mr Herbert Marshall, who likes supple. brisk parts best, perhaps "has appeared to better advantage than as Stefan, the Alsatian hospital orderly, Marthe's confederate and her lover, who gives his own life to save her from the tiring squad; but Conrad Veidt, as the town commandant, and Sir Gerald du Maurier, as the hospital doctor, achieve the highest possible success. MiEdmund Gwenn as the Belgian burgomaster gives one of those minor performances in which every word and every look have exactly the right emphasis.

LIBERTY THEATRE Nature is frequently a better actor than man, and intelligent photography can give natural wonders dramatic as well as scenic interest. "S.O.S. Iceberg," at the Liberty Theatre this week, is the latest of many interesting German-inspired (if not Germanmade) films set in scenes of snow and ice, and though it has a definite plot the thread of the story is unimportant because of the dominance of the settins. The story concerns an expedition i its purpose is never clear', the members of which try to cross a fjord on floating masses of ice, ana who arc eventually marooned on a berg. Rescue is brought by Ernst Udet. whose ilying anions; cliffs of ice is a revelation of daring and skill. The acting in the iilm is unimportant. Hod La Rocque as the expedition leader is not impressive: Gibson Gowland. as the fearcrazed promoter, gives a good character study, and the work of the Germans is .straightforward. But in photography the aim is memorable for several shots—a sudden view of miles of crumbling ice-face, upturned wondering faces in an Eskimo camp, and the lift and swing of Udet's aeroplane.

GRAND THEATRE "Red Dust,"" starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, is the principal picture at the Grand Theatre this week.