MAJESTIC THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 139, 8 March 1941, Page 15

MAJESTIC THEATRE

So greatly has Metro-GoldWyn-Mayer’s version of “Pride and Prejudice” appealed to the public of Wellington that the management of the Majestic Theatre has extended its season another week, making it the third in succession. Infinite care has been taken to portray nil the background detail of Jane Austen’s Meryton, and the picture bristles with little touches of local colour so interesting at times as almost to run parallel in interest with the many characters. Laurence Olivier, as Darcy, and Greer Garson, as Elizabeth, carry the main burden of the story with a charm that needs no wordy elaboration, but all of the cast are good, and some of those in the lesser roles can only be described as

excellent. Melville Cooper is Mr. Collins come to life.

As the film tells the story, the Bennett family—father, mother and five daughters —lives an uneventful existence at lovely Meryton, with nothing to disturb its calm but for some fear on mother’s part that her handsome and gifted daughters might not have sufficient opportunities to make suitable matches. This dovecote is put all in a flutter by the arrival of Mr. Bingley (“£5OOO a year, my dear 1”) and his friend Darcy at a neighbouring house. Bingley and Jane Bennett are soon very much in love, and despite some setbacks and Mr. Darcy’s rather stiffnecked opinion of himself, he and Elizabeth are soon touched with the same pleasant but worrying complaint. Interest from here on centres on the unravelling of the two major love-plots, filled out and made human by the amazingly life-like characterizations of the whole cast.