ENTERTAINMENTS Opera House

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1950, Page 8

ENTERTAINMENTS Opera House

“Monsier Verdour,” starring Charles Chaplin. Once more Charles Chaplin has. cut from the whole cloth of his genius a new cinema pattern. In “Monsieur Verdoux” showing at the Opera House tonight, he has -created a new form of screen story-telling, in which are blended the hysterical laughter, the romance and shocking drama which are blended in life iti self. Chaplin has become the suave and dapper boulevardier; the exquisite rogue who loves and leaves his victims —and the audience —grasping. Chaplin wrote the macabre yet deliriously funny story of a bank clerk who, discharged after 30 years’ faithful service, is unable to find the employment which will provide for his adored invalid wife and small son. His logic, born of desperation, and his realism nurtured by his experience in the business world, Verdoux turns to murder as a career. He disposes of one victim after another. Only two elude him. Annabella is indestructible —vulgar penurious and so deservedly lucky that members of the audience find themselves as one with the harassed Verdoux in wishing to put a quick end to her. The girl is also spared, but because Verdoux’s innate humanity and devotion find and echo in her character. When war sweeps over Europe, Verdoux’s wife and son are destroyed and with them his incentive for “business as usual.” He gives himself up, and in a brilliant slashing sumation, confronts the judges. Regent Theatre ‘‘Lost Boundaries,” starring Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer. An intensely moving, thought-pro-voking human interest drama, revolving around the problem of race prejudice against Negroes. The story is based on a factual account about a light-skinned Negro doctor and his wife, who, unable to overcome discrimination because of their colour, passed themselves off as whites in a small New Hampshire community, which did not learn of their secret for 20 years. The story is told with considerable dramatic force and is filled with strong emotional situations, particularly in the last half, where their secret comes to light and they are compelled to inform their ' grown son and daughter, who be- : lieve themselves to be white, that they are Negroes. The characters are deeply sympathetic and one feels . keenly their resentment at a society ' which compels them to resort to de- ' ception to make a place for them- j selves in the world.