CRYSTAL PALACE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21296, 16 October 1934, Page 8

CRYSTAL PALACE

TWO FINE DRAMAS With the help of Adolphe Menjou, George Raft has made an admirable success of "The Trumpet Blows," and with Frances Drake, in a bright story of a; matador's life in Mexico and Mexico's habits in general, they have provided a thoroughly entertaining film. Menjou's fine performance as a Mexican bandit trying to be a gentleman is mainly responsile for the success of the film. Raft is his young brother, for whose success as a farmer and a gentleman he would give everything. Raft comes home from the university to his brother's ranch near Mexico City and immediately disappoints him by making bull-fighting his career. The story brings in several thrilling scenes with Raft matching his skill with both "small-town" and "bigtown" bulls, and sets him up as a hero of the arena. Its Mexican setting gives the film a particular attraction. "The House on Fifty-sixth Street" is another fine drama, but a drama of a vastly different type. It is one of the greatest successes Kay Francis has achieved, and probably gives her more opportunity to display her ability in dramatic work than any of her previous films. It is set mainly in the midst of night clubs and the saloons of Atlantic liners, giving Kay Francis the roles first of a chorus girl, then of a wife and mother in a New York mansion, and in the end at the age of a little more than 40, the head of a card-gambling parlour in a "speakeasy" set up in her old home. Twenty years of her life she spends in a prison, and some exciting moments she spends in keeping her daughter out of it

SpV T MAJESTIC "I'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER" To the layman a modern highly mechanised system of telephonic communication does not seem to offer any great scope for romance or drama. But ''l've Got Your Number," at the Majestic, shows once again that the layman does not know much about it. This thrilling story is based almost entirely on the operation of a great telephone system; its has a sequence of entertaining and dramatic situations which make it a very interesting film. But the interest is heightened by the genius of a director who has realised that an audience must be I shown how these amazing things happen before they can be believed feasible. In this way, "I've Got Your Number" has the stamp of genuineness. Another inevitable reflection about this fast-moving drama is that the peculiarities of American slang can be used with fine effect in the proper place. At the end of the film there is a climax as exciting as any of the general melees, killings, or beatings which characterised the wild westerns in their hey-day. Joan Blondell, in the role of a nicely behaved telephone operator, is used by a gang of American crooks whose leader, in the guise of a friend, manages to extract from her important telephone massages received about certain "big deals." Twice the operator is apparently knowingly implicated in these frauds. Pat O'Brien is the debonair telephone mechanic whose sound common sense—although a missing quality when women are about—enables him to track down the gangsters and save the operator for himself. The whole picture provides lively, up-to-date entertainment, with a general appeal to the average picture-goer. There is a good selection of shorts, including one of the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester in Australia. During the interval several'very beautiful young women from Auckland, wearing the very latest in bathing fashions, show the young women of Christchurch what should be worn on the beaches this season. Mr D. McGill, a Christchurch tenor, sings several songs. ,