ST. JAMES THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 105, 27 January 1940, Page 16

ST. JAMES THEATRE

Charles Laughton's many admirers will not need to be told that he is in the top Hight of screen actors. But no matter how assiduously they have followed his performances, his remarkable portrayal of ■•Ginger Ted," the amiable, amusing but bv no means ludicrous scoundrel in the Universal film released yesterday at the St James Theatre. “The Beachcomber.'’ will shock them into renewed appreciation of his many-sided genius. Some of the credit for this bright and slightly satirical comedy must, ot course, go Io the director. Erich Pommer. whose skill has made tropical romance with a sharp edge to it. instead of (he treacly glamous more usual in such a. setting. “The Beachcomber." in short, is a film quite out of the ordinary run. The story is Somerset Maugham's “Vessel of Wrath.'' with minor variations which detract nothing from its author's form of rather disillusioned but quite passionate sentiment. "Ginger Ted" is a beachcombing remittance-man, somewhere in the Dutch East Indies, whose latent charm and vigour draws the starchy missionary (Elsa Lanchester ) through the successive stages of disgust at his antisocial behaviour, and a desire to reform him. to live, and finally marriage. Lynne Guthrie is the missionary's brother, and Robert Newton is the Government official who drinks with tile social outcast, regards him as his best friend—and jails him for everybody's good. The whole show is (■rammed with dialogue that tickles the mental palate, and scenes that stimulate the senses. When "Giitgei' Ted" is banished in a tropic paradise to get the drink out of his system, he lives in a palm-loaf hut. he wears the very minimum of clothes. lie swings in a cheap liapiinock in the shade, cracking sea 110 ped-shells with a shanghai ami pebbles, his joy not in an array of splendour that dulls the senses, but in the simpliicty that sharpens them. There is, too. a scene in which "Ginger's" friend has to try him for getting into 11 brawl. As Hie chief witness, the I'ennile missionary. talking like a machine-gun. rattles up the score of "Ginger's" iniquities, tlie judge, going by contraries, scribbles shorter ad shorter “sentences.” on his writing block. But al the demand for deportation, a (lock of Javanese girls rush “Ginger" in the dock. protesting tearfully itrajnst his leaving them. Chief among them is the judge’s own "little friend”; that is too much for him; he erases all his notes, and imposes the stiff sentence of three months’ hard labour.

Still, when all that is said, it is too little, and too fragmentary to give any adequate notion of just how amusing anti how ••different’' "The Beachcomber" realy is. It. fits into no set category but.' like most of Laughton's films, makes a niche for itseif in motion picture history. Those who miss- it are going to be left out in the cold for many months when the conversation turns toward "pictures." for it is a show not only to lie seen, but Io be talked about later with reminiscent enthusiasm.