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Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 171, 7 April 1923, Page 17

The second version of Mary Pick-, ford’s “Tess of the Storm Country” has arrived in New Zealand and was screened recently before several of the most prominent picture men in this country. The opinion was general that the picture is the greatest thing shg has yet done. ; Douglas Fairbanks offers rare spices of drama and comedy in “One of the Blood” at the Empress this week. The series of thrills in which he is featured leads him from New York to Mexico, thence to A lire, an obscure little kingdom in Europe, where he quells a rebellion and finds a little countess. “Garrison’s Finish,” a stirring story of racing, love, and millions, comes to the screen with Jack Pickford and Madge Bellamy in the leading roles. The picture is said to be the biggest racing drama of the day and there are seen shots at some of America’s most > famous racing courses and American classic racing events. For his latest motion picture sensation, “One Exciting Night,” which is announced for release in New Zealand soon, D. W. Griffith has taken for his cue the increasing popularity of the last two or three years of the stage melodrama, and produced a mystery I picture par excellence. He gives five, of the six elements that go to make up effective mystery — secreted treasure, personal disappearance, puzzling homicide, hidden identity, and the return of the avenging spirit. And with it all he gives the spectator, an altogether marvellous assortment in the' way of actual entertainment.

Bisted upon because they change likfl fashions, and it is humiliating to b« still Victorian. We seem to a Frenchman to be conventional because we never have time to grow quite used to the convention of the moment, and so obey it self-consciously; but he has forgotten centuries ago that his conventions are conventions; they are merely the manner in which wellbehaved people behaved.

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Oscar Asche, who opened in Perth with Cairo recently is going to do some train journeys soon. He and his entire company (not to mention the zoo), will proceed in duo time to Adelaide and Brisbane, subsequently sailing to Now Zealand. He will probably return to Sydney in October with new productions. When Manning Chambers, the nextdoor neighbour of tho Sydney Hippodrome, caught fire recently, the first to scent danger were the animals in the circus. Their restlessness was evident long before the management was informed of' the outbreak. Twelve thousand people watched the awe-in-spiring sight of leaping flames and crashing timber in the vicinity of Central Station, but the largo audience who witnessed Wirths’ excellent performance were unconscious of anything being amiss. The programme was

shortened, and patrons left the theatre in a normal manner, never dreaming that the dumb animals they loft m cages had a keener instinct than their own. Everyone knows th© fear 4hat lions possess for fire, and apparently it was not until the outbreak was subdued that Wirths’ trainer could quieten them. .