BRILLIANT ALL-STAR CAST

Evening Star, Issue 21689, 7 April 1934, Page 9

BRILLIANT ALL-STAR CAST

•I WAS A SPY’ TRULY GREAT FUN A great and moving dramatic story is-told in ‘I Was a Spy,’ the British film which will bo screened at the opening of the State Theatre (late Plaza) next Wednesday. It recapitulates the daring deeds of Marthe M*Kenna, who was a Belgian nurse in a German hospital during the war. Gaumont-Brit-ish adapted the film from the woman spy’s own reminiscences, and Victor , Saville has directed, a British picture that has been acclaimed as a triumph of realism/ It is a war-time story, intensely dramatic, suspenseful, and thrilling. One of the chief features of the production is the reconstructed market place of Iloulers on-a scale sufficiently large to accommodate almost a battalion of infantry, together with the units which go to form a fighting regiment, and the usual stalls, etc., which are part of the everyday busy life in the centre of a little country town. The brilliant' cast is led by Madeleine Carroll, the most capable and popular British screen actress of to-day; Herbert Marshall, a strong favourite; Conrad Yeidt, the Continental actor famous in two continents; Gerald du Maurier, one of England’s greatest stage ' artists; and Edmund Gwenn, a screen favourite whose character studies are always excellent. ‘ I Was a Spy ’ is a. real life story, and it is told m the ideal way—it is lived, not acted. The people concerned are living their lives, not acting .upon the stage. Hence the human reality of the whole production. The story is simple, but full of daring and heroism; full of humanity and of the war-game at its worst; pity for the wounded, death for the enemy. Marthe, impelled by her humanity to act as nurse in a German hospital, also accepts the call of patriotism, spies upon the Germans, and works to defeat their aims. Day in and day out she lives a life that will be forfeited if she fails. Information leaks out of the town, but the Germans fail to discover its. source. Marthe works hand-in-hand with Stephan, a hospital orderly. They deal the enemy a heavy blow when they destroy a dump of cylinders containing poison gas. When the gassed Allied soldiers pour into the hospital, Marthe determines to avenge the enemy’s brutality. News that a church parade is to be held on the following Sunday is passed on to British headquarters, and the service is bombed. Next she sacrifices her honour to obtain information of the projected visit of the Kaiser and then— Marthe is trapped. No description can convey the poignancy of the endless emotional scenes, ‘ the tenseness of the accumulating drama, the tragedy of the trial, or the magnificence of the spectacular side of a truly great British film.