POWERFUL DRAMATIC THEME

Evening Star, Issue 22896, 2 March 1938, Page 9

POWERFUL DRAMATIC THEME

NEAGLE IN ‘ VICTORIA THE GREAT ’ * Victoria tho Great ’ comes on Friday to tho State in a powerful dramatisation of tho reign and, incidentally, tho romance of the famous British Sovereign with Prince Albert of SaxeCoburg and Gotha. Anna Neagle, popular English film actress, appears in tho title role, co-starred with Anton Walbrook, international stage and screen star, with Walter Rilla and H. B. Warner as featured players. The sumptuously produced film stresses the intensely human side of the Queen. _ The film proves that the Victorian social atmosphere is by uo means as drab as some writers have seen fit to present it. Victoria loved to dance, to ride, liked horses and dogs, and was not averse to a flirtation when tho right man came along, as he did in tho person of Prince Albert. That the Queen had a lively sense of humour is indicated by tho scene when she derives such amusement from watching Lord Melbourne, her dignified Prime Minister, portrayed by H. B. Warner, astride a wooden horse, whilo posing for his portrait. Rilia is cast as Prince Ernest, Albert’s chum, with whom he suffers all the agonies of seasickness when the two are en route for England on a Channel paddle steamer, another of the film’s lighter moments. The wedded life of Victoria and Prince Albert lasted 27 years. It has for background a series of colourful historical events that made the Queen’s reign the most notable in British annals. Highlights are numerous, but perhaps tho most sensationally effective episode is when tho would-be assassin fires at the Queen, and her Consort guards her with his body from the bullet. Infinite pathos develops in the scene of Prince Albert’s death, so realistically acted by Anna Neagle and Walbrook, as she kneels and clings desperately to the dying man in an hysteria of uncontrolled grief.