OUTSTANDING FILMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 57, 4 September 1937, Page 7

OUTSTANDING FILMS

"TALL TIMBERS"

AUSTRALIAN TRIUMPH

With every new production Australia makes another stride towards recognition as one of the foremost film-lprodueing countries. ' Quite a number of, talented Australian actors and actresses have gone to Hollywood, where they have become stars of the American screen. But the time is coming,- judging,by Cinesound's latest production, now showing at the St. James Theatre, when Hollywood will be faced with a serious rival. j "Tall Timbers" makes use of resources hitherto untapped by the screen, and makes use of them in a telling way. Lately there have been many successful pictures of life in American lumber-camps, but the Australian production is fit to take its place among the best of them. Australia's giant forests are used in striking fashion as a background for a. thrilling romance of rival lumber camps." • The photography is excellent, and catches'the full beauty of scenes which would be hard to better anywhere. The felling of the huge trees is shown from close range, and there is a spectacular scene where a whole mountainside is swept from top to bottom of :its standing timber. The operation is carried out by the partial cutting through of the lower trees, and as the top ones • are felled, they take with them the lower trees, until every one is levelled. The filming of this section, and of that showing three people trapped' among the tailing giants;, is amongst the most spectacular and.convincing film work seen in Wellington. ; • . For the i first time, Australia s second most popular summer pastime and one of its ifinest services is portrayed on the screen as part of a feature picture. When the film opens, the scene is a surf beach,, thronged with swimmers and sun-bathers. A team of surf life-savers is shown going into action when a call for help is heard, and the rescue of a charming.but impetuous girl takes one easily and naturally into: the beginning of a really first-class story. The girl, Shirley Anne Richards, is playing the part of the adopted daughter of a timber company owner, and the handsome young beltman (Frank Leigh ton) turns out to be a university graduate in forestry and the hero of the film. This scene is indicative of the quality of many shown in the course oi the fiim. Essential parts of it were filmed in the studio; and it is very difficult indeed to tell these from the shots which were actually taken on the beach. , . . . Frank Leigh ton gives a convincing performance of real quality as the hero of the, picture, who becomes foreman and ■ ranger of a huge forest section, arid who combats the dynamiting activities of a rival company. As his employer's adopted daughter, Shirley Anne Richards shows that there is perhaps better acting material in Australia than what came out of A genial villain without any redeeming characteristics but a disarming joviality and an ability to crack a joke when almost knocked out by the hero is Campbell Cdpelin, one of'the real discoveries of the film.i Joe Valli turns in an excellent character performance as the lame Scottish engine-driver. A fine El Brendel comedy, newsreels a Robert Benchley featurette, and a screen snapshots-review make up an exceptional programme.