ENTERTAINMENTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 20 March 1928, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS.

“LES MISERABLES.” FIRiST NIGHT AT OPERA HOUSE. HUGO’S CHARACTERS BROUGHT TO LIFE. In “Les Miserables,” the film which was given its initial local screening at the Opera House last night, admirers of the art of Victor Hugo, and those interested. generally in the drama, may see a play worthy of their attention. “Les Miserables” is strong in a dramatic sense and those who like their film entertainment to be of the saccharine order may not appreciate it as it deserves, but others will believe that the management of the Opera House is deserving of thanks for bringing to Hawera a film which must rank as a masterpiece of the screen. From every point of view the picture is a success; the acting is superb and the production is artistic. After witnessing the treatment some other wellknown novels have received at the hand of the cinema producer, one may be excused for expecting little from the screen treatment of the powerful life story of Jean Valjean, but it has to be admitted that those responsible for making the film have succeeded wonderfully. It may be that it is because the actors and the producers were themselves French that this story of early nineteenth-century France has been so successfully adapted to the screen. No producer has taken it upon himself to “improve” the art of the novelist by interpolating scenes which lie himself did not visualise nor have the actors taken liberties with the in terpretations of the various characters. There are necessarily many gaps in the story, but the manner in which the plot has been “cut” to enable th screen version to come within the compass of an evening’s entertainment leaves not the slightest cause for complaint. As stated, the acting is excellent. Not one member of the cast has taken it upon himself to make the dramatic scenes heavier than they need be; the heroic, the base, the cruel, the gentle and the noble are allowed to be all that their creator would doubtless have had them, no more and no less —a fact which, connotes admirable restraint on the part of the producer. M. Gabriel Gabrio, who pl'ays the role of Jean Valjean in both phases of that character’s life and also interprets the minor role of the falsely-accused Champmathicu, is an actor of a calibre seldom seen in films which find their way to New Zealand. Restraint is the keynote of his acting, as it is of the acting of Jill t'ho members of the cast and in consequence patrons have a powerful story powerfully and simply told. Even the child who played the role of the juvenile Cosette did not exploit the opportunities she undoubtedly had of making her condition more pitable than it was; and one wonders what American actress, playing the role of Cosette as a young woman, could have resisted the temptation to fill the whole stage instead of providing a gentle contrast to the grimness of the fate which dogged Valjean for forty years. Though the film version of the story is so much shorter than that of the book, it is so admirably constructed that all the principal features which one remembers seem to ibe included and they follow in a sequence which allows anyone not conversant with the action of the novel to follow the career of Valjean from beginning to end. The incident bv which M. Madeleine reveals his true identity to Javert through a display of his exceptional strength, the meeting of Valjean and the child Cosette, the carrying _of Marius through the sewers of Paris are represented. One misses the terrible figure of the woman Fantine, but for the rest all the essentials are there making a whole Which ranks high among the? dramatic screen productions of the year. “Les Miserables” will be screened again this evening and to-morrow.