THE DOVER ROAD

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 252, 21 July 1934, Page 21

THE DOVER ROAD

! Diana Wynyard AND RED WAGON

(By

John Storm.)

With “The Dover Road” and “Red Wagon,” an interesting comparison can be made this week. The first is an American picture with British players; the second, a British picture with some American screen celebrities.

A. A. Milne’s playfully satiric little offering of a phase of life greatly in vogue at the moment, as subject for entertainment, contrasts sharply with Lady Eleanor Smith’s epitome of a phase of life and a fashion of entertainment that is passing. These two, the neat little studio film and the great bid “regiona-ry,” as pictures, must shake hands. They each mark a development. They each hold a place, they each sway gYeat numbers in appreciation. Perfect English is spoken in the picture made in Hollywood, good English is mostly spoken in the picture made in Britain. Players have crosed the Atlantic for each of them. Chief of these is Diana Wynyard, leading lady in “The Dover -Road.” The last time I saw her she played the part of a noble Austrian, and she played it well. Her head is set on her shoulders in such queenly fashion.

But dress Diana in a little scolloped green tunic and long green leggings, and she might be Peter Pan himself-— her eyes are so round, so brimful of suppressed hilarity and happy mystery. Her. voice is the same. While the rest of her classic features stay just classic, all the time her eyes can make her anything. They do make her the life find soul of A. A. Milne’s mysteriously benign little story. Peter Pan, the age-old spirit of earth and youth, and irresponsibility in the person of Diana Wynyard as “Pauline” with Reginald Owen as the Englishman who has left his home, his castle and his wife, goes motoring down<the Dover Road. Diana makes the whole thing so deliciously inconsequent that one eannot describe it as the story of a plain, stupid, clumsy Englishman running away with a girl, but as the same —to use Yvonne Arnauud’s lovely expression—“pompous boy,” escaping for a space from his pomp and circumstance, from himself and his equally stupid wife, to bask in the sunshine of inconsequence. Wives and husbands please take notice that it is the stupidness which breaks up homes. Clive Brook, as the rich eccentric who halts each couple he can catch for a week of reflection of all those who seek the Dover Road, surpasses himself.— It seems to have done Clive Brook good to act with Diana Wynyard. He has caught the proper spirit of inconsequence which animates the book. The series of surprises they hold in store for everyone are a little friendly reminder, that if you are stupid you will never capture the spirit of Peter Pan. Circus Higliliglits. If anyone asked me the highlights of the travelling circus story, “Red Wagon,” I would say they are three— Greta Nissen taming tigers, Charles Bickford taming hordes, and Paul Graetz shaping life to finer ends. The two younger people’ tame the outer things, Paul Graetz has so polished the rough edges of life, that he gives a perfect little vignette of gracious existence in the midst of the trials of the road. To wdteh the performance of this consummate artist as the benign showman, would make a delightful evening's entertainment in itself, but his part in it is only a fraction of this great show. Through it all runs the thread of the life of Joe Prince, orpliau of an earlier circus, victim of the board school system, and sometime exile. We see Joe in all his phases, interpreted by little boy actors. From his babyhood he could stand on the back of a horse, last he finds his way back to the tents that hold all the breath of life to him. The little scene, when Paul Graetz as Schultz, and Amy Vaness as Mrs. Schultz, come out and find him practicing trick-riding on the old grey horse in the moonlight, is to me the most perfect thing in the picture, be cause the most emotionally complete. Instead of raging, they praise him. The I’ttle boy has found his desire at last. He is a trick-rider, and with it he has found real understanding and protection.