"CAFE METROPOLE"

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

"CAFE METROPOLE"

ROMANCE IN THE MODERN

MANNER

In "Cafe Metropole," the Fox Films' release with the bright trio of Tyrone I Power,. Loretta Young, and. Adolphe Menjou, which is to be seen at the Plaza Theatre, no one is quite what he pretends to be. Victor, the suave, inspired, rapid-thinking, ruthlessly-acting head of a restaurant, is in reality an embezzler; the "Prince Alexis," iof an old Russian family, has the homelyl name of Alexander Brown; the heiress he woos, and (as. Victor intends) weds, is not taken in for a moment by his'air of mystery and collegiate Russian; the head waiter is a prince in disguise. In substance the film is the soundly familiar plot of the! man who meets love under false colours, the American in prince's clothing. But it is rescued from mediocrity by the novel twists which give it point and zest, the approach of Miss Young to her role, and the superb villainy of Menjou. The latter has a role of the kind which he handled so well in "Girl in a Million," the conscienceless, resourceful schemer who wins through to his goal by an infinite variety of ruses, but in this later film more sleek, more daring, playing for higher stakes. He is already an embezzler when, staking more money which does not belong to him, he wins 400,000 francs' and gains, too, the worthless cheque of a young man who stakes much and loses it, and then* finds himself condemned to act out the role that Victor assigns to him. This is the familiar part of the Russian prince of very ancient lineage : and furry accent with an, old-world courtliness and a lavish Continental manner in entertainment. The goal of Victor, it frtms, is the marriage settlement, with a payment of half a million dol-l

lars down before the ceremony and no possible contingency thereafter overlooked. And the courtship proceeds by fits and starts, and then does not proceed at all until the girl helps it, takes it into her own hands, and uses a telephone as an instrument of attack and defence —attack on the young man who has just fled from her, defence against her vaguely disturbed father. It is hereabouts that Miss Young, as fresh and vital and accomplished m her way as anyone in filmdom, proves such a strength that she almost steals the picture from the somewhat woolly hero and the alert and poised Menjou. There are some good things; her deliberate deflating of the Russian prince every time he shows signs of remembering his ancestry or their habits and sins, the manoeuvring in the hat shop, the escape from ; the real Russian prince who is characteristically working as a waiter, the dry, sharp humour of the family scenes. And when, the young woman throws aside all disguise and goes into action, her husband-to-be and her father are as powerless-.befqre her as the American Consulate and the French' police. . Everyone, that is to say, except Victor. He scores his own necessary triumph so'that virtue does not completely sweep the board •and merit-r-the merit of quickness and resource—has its own reward. The film, of course, is acted'in and around the Cafe Metropole in Paris. It is elaborately mounted, quick-moving, filled to the brim with good small parts, and excellently photographed. Sharply defined minor roles are played by Gregory Ratoff (who had a hand in the authorship of the film), Charles Winninger (as the millionaire father), and Helen Westley (as the wife who encourages her daughter's, revolt and who has a liking for gangster slang). Supports include newsreels and a cartoon. ■"•'-•