STEVENSON'S 'EBB TIDE'

Evening Star, Issue 22881, 12 February 1938, Page 5

STEVENSON'S 'EBB TIDE '

A FILM OF UNIQUE BEAUTY “ The most satisfying colour picture that has yet reached the screen,” These words, or others of the same meaning, may be gleaned from almost every overseas review of Paramount’s ‘ Ebb Tide,’ which the studio has adapted with marked success from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name. There is no setting which could he so perfectly adapted to technicolour photography as the South Seas, locale of ‘ Ebb Tide.’ The varied tropical vegetation, the bright blue of Pacific skies, the water shades of the South Pacific, truly needed the assistance of colour if their true beauty was to be transferred to the screen, and reports are that full advantage of so beautiful a setting has been accepted in no uncertain manner by the Paramount Studios. The result is a film of unique beauty. Apart from its scenio loveliness, ‘ Ebb Tide ’ is important to the motion picture industry and to theatregoers in that it brings Oscar Homolka to Hollywood for the first time. At this juncture Homolka is possibly unknown to the majority of theatregoers, but he has really been very prominently associated with Max Reinhardt, under whose tutelage he has rapidly become the greatest stage star of present-day Vienna, He has made two or three pictures in England, but it was his role in ‘ Rhodes of Africa,’ coupled, of course, with his brilliant career on the Viennese stage, that encouraged the offers of stardom from Paramount in Hollywood. In addition to Oscar Homolka, the cast of * Ebb Tide ’ includes Frances Farmer. Ray Milland, Lloyd Nolan, and Barry Fitzgerald.