REGENT THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 63, 11 September 1937, Page 7

REGENT THEATRE

"I MET HIM IN PARIS"

There is a new tradition of film comedy arising with Paramount and "I Met Him in Pans, . beginning in the forceful assertion of herself by a young woman about to make the dream tnp-.of her life, and moving through a varied arc of amusement, is an addition to Claudette Colbert and Robert Young art here again in this film, which is at the Regent Theatre, and with them is Melvyn Douglas, and the result is something which goes on and on witn infinite ingenuity, a rich background, and so many laughs that it is, in a way quite a good thing that it ends when it does. Here again is unsentimental romance, love under pressure, so to speak, and the determined revolt of human nature against me expected. Melvyn Douglas does not think that Robert Young and Claudette Colbert can go to Switzerland together and remain platomc. Very well, they will show him. But then Mr. Douglas decides to go along.too in order to show that he was right after all. That is a good enough start for any comedy, but the, subsequent developments, the riotous, "hardboiled" romance, with the bickerings and accomplishments of the two men keeping the pendulum swinging first one way and then the other, with Robert Young desperately focusing on his immediate object and Douglas blundering around in the effort to prevent the inevitable from happening and Claudette Colbert firing up at the. slightest - unfortunate word—these things add up to a rapid and resourceful comedy. The fun is continuous and it is studded with some remarkably good things—the impetuous hotel clerk; the adventure in the runway of the toboggan; the skiing trip with its band of Swiss materialising in unexpected places, with fervour and terrifying yodels; the time when Douglas is directed to the wrong room in the hotel/even the final misery party in the bar of the Paris hotel from which man after man goes forth to the slaughter. In this curious love race on ice and through snow the unifying performance is that of Claudette Colbert, who reveals herself as just a nice girl on a holiday getting mixed up with a lot of things which do not attract her. Robert Young's main interest, outside of his novels, is women, and this adventure is, of course, the only adventure for him as long as it lasts. Melvyn Douglas does not get full marks for tact; for odd, but male and understandable, reasons he does not want to reveal the whole situation and he is equally not interested in the girl to the point of marrying her to save her from Young. So he just tags' along, with the vague hope that everything will turn out right and that his fatherly supervision will ensure that it does, turn out all right. And that is the worst thing he can do, for the result of it is that both the other people in this queer three-cornered romance are soon at odds with him. and with one another. The film is excellently done, Wesley Ruggles being responsible for the direction, while the Swiss scenes, besides being funny, are of a winter magnificence not often ex|ceeded.

An excellent supporting programme includes the latest newsreels, a very fine orchestral number, entitled."Blue Velvet Music," a Paramount pictorial, and "Popeye" the Sailor's latest adventure, "My Artistical Temperature."