TENSE SCENES, SMART DIALOGUE

Evening Star, Issue 21710, 3 May 1934, Page 5

TENSE SCENES, SMART DIALOGUE

' PENTHOUSE ’ AT EMPIRE TO-MORROW The adventures of a young society lawyer who establishes a practice among the curious circles of the racketeers, are revealed in ‘ Penthouse,’ the exciting film, starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy, which comes to the Empire Theatre to-morrow. Warner Baxter plays the part of the lawyer who is brought into a particularly dangerous case in order to save the man who has just taken aiyay Baxter’s sweetheart. The case is one in which the dangerous leader of a band of racketeers has taken revenge, and the first thing which the lawyer receives is a warning to keep out. Paradoxically, the defence also asks him to retire from the field, his association with ' unsavoury cases not hejng to their liking, but he refuses to withdraw, and before the end has succeeded in winning his case and in winning a bride, i The picture abounds with tense situations, and is well acted by a large . cast. Seldom has there been a more i close-knit or more exciting plot. The I pace is vapid from the start, hut it gains in momentum all the way, and finishes with a climax that really deserves to be called “smashing.” It is the dialogue, however, that really lifts ‘ Penthouse ’ into the front rank.- It calls a spade an agricultural instrument with a mixture of cheerful frankness and subtle innuendo that take’s one’s breath away at the same time as it disarms criticism. The skeins of the plot are well twisted, but the threads are- never broken; and there is a fascinating interest in watching the unravelling of them. For probably the first time in her screen, career Myrna Loy shares the final fade-out with the hero. She definitely' abandons the sloe-eyed Oriental type into which she -cemed to have beep cast for eternity, and makes a delightful, witty, unconvential and charming heroine. Others of note in a cast that could hardly have been bettered are Mae Clarke, Phillips Holmes, and George E. Stone.