REGENT THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 112, 4 February 1933, Page 5

REGENT THEATRE

“Devil and the Deep” In the old days the hearts of filmfeoers used to palpitate when the hero raced madly to save the heroine from a worse fate than death. Ever since that good and almost forgotten time, thrills have come from the screen in many ways, each a new development. There have been plenty of fresh lines —the espionage era, the haunted house epoch, the quasiseientifie period—-but the most subtle and gripping of all is the one exploited in the superb Paramount film, "Devil and the Deep,” which opened at the Regent Theatre yesterday. Here, indeed, is a picture which for sheer dramatic intensity and almost insupportable excitement, takes first-class honours. The long and unforgettable scenes in a disabled British submarine is a thing that makes the pulse not only throb, but. rattle, an episode which rivets the appalled attention, of the audience from the very beginning, and leaves it emotionally limp at the end. Heading the cast in this story of love, jealousy, sanity, and maduess, set against a naval background, are Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, and the amazingly good Charles Laughton. There are no "huts” about this film —it is altogether too good for anyone to miss. ' The direction is excellent, and the resource used throughout, seems to be a successful pastiche of the brighter ideas of the finest Continental directors. It is rather a naive procedure, especially when there are snatches of pure and identical Eisenstein ; but it is effective. Supports are of good standard.