REGENT THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 229, 22 June 1940, Page 7

REGENT THEATRE

Telling most absorbingly of Dick Heldar, war correspondent in the Sudan who has certain artistic possibilities which bts careless nature will not immediately exploit to the full, “The Light That Failed,” based on Rudyard Kipling’s immortal novel of the same name, has entered the second week of an enthusiastic season at the Regent Theatre. Torpenbow (“Torps’’), also in the Sudan, has great faith in Heldar’s artistic genius, and manages to get his work recognized in London. When they return to England, Dick finds that he is on a fair way to success. Money and adulation. while giving him the good things of life, steal his integrity as . an artist however, and lie takes advantage of his prosperity to paint not-so-good pictures which are sure to sell rather than his own vital and sometimes uncomfortably realistic achievements. “Torps” does not like this phase, lint has to grin and bear it. One day Dick meets Maisie, who was a chilhood sweetheart, and he finds that, she, too, desires, above all, to become a great artist. Dick falls in love with her, but she is honest enough to tell him she desires only the help he can give her with her art. "Torps” brings home Bessie. a little Cockney waif who proves the inspiration for one of Heldar’s best pictures. Heldar now finds that an old wound received in the Sudan is threatening him with blindness. Under the stress and torment of this menace he paints Bessie as “Melancholia,” and in such a manner as to wring from the usually'noncommittal “Torps” the verdict that it is good. The feeling of achievement which "Melancholia" brings him gives Dick some sort of stability when lie finally does go blind, but he does not know that Bessie. in a lit. of rage because of his interference between her and “Torps,” Jias ruined the picture beyond repair. How, in the long run, Heldar works out his own salvation is brought to the screen in a very moving and sympathetic manner.

Ronald Colman gives an outstanding and thorougbly-enjoyable performance as Heldar, though Walter Huston, as Torpenhow, almost “steals” the picture.