SAVE THE VICTORY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 29 December 1923, Page 7

SAVE THE VICTORY.

PICTURE STORY OF THE

FLAGSHIP.

NEW EDUCATIONAL FILM

LONDON, Dct. 10. Admiral of the ±'ieet bir F. C. Doveton Sturdee addressed a large invited audience yesterday at the Alhambra, when the film of H.M.S. Victory was shown for the first time. "When His Majesty the King heard that a film had been produced," said the Admiral, "he commanded an exhibition of it at Balmoral Castle, and expressed great gratification witftt the results achieved."

In appealing to the film producers, Admiral Sturdee said that he wanted it shown not so much to raise money for the "Save the Victory Fund" ac to invoke- that patriotism which this nation had always possessed, and which it required in tne future just as much as in the past. To manufacture a film which gives in less than an hour the history of Nelson's flagship is something rather out of the usual line of film production, but those responsible have succeeded in giving the public something quite inspiring and at the same time educational. To depict the flagship in movement in the many engagements in which she took part, of course, is impossible, but all the excellent battle paintings extant, showing various engagements in which, the Victory took part from 1778 until she was towed into Gibraltar after Trafalgar are pressed into service. Subneadings are taken from "The Story of H.M.S. Victory" by Geoffrey Callender.

We see the first Victory which was built in 1560 carrying her six sails, and then Nelson's Victory flying before the wind with her thirty-one sails. A space of a hundred years brings us to a scene on the high seas to-day, with a line of super-Dreadnoughts firing broadsides. We see the Victory on the stocks at Chatham, the christening ceremony, and in this latter the Victory as it is to-day is used as a basis for the picture. So on through her victorious career in many battles to the great day of Trafalgar. The scene of Nelson's death has been re-enacted for the film on board the Victory, and here there is movement and realism. Nelson's funeral in Londo'-n follows, and we see the great column in Trafalgar Square beneath its scaffolding—a nation's tribute to the famous admiral.

Then follow actual modern scenes relating to the old flagship as she lay at anchor at Portsmouth —an. inspection or. board by the late Prince Louis of Battenberg, the removal of the cupids from the bows, and finally a picture of the Victory as she will look when her restoration is complete and she is firmly at rest in the "old naval dock now her home.

It is an excellent film, and the interest is sustained throughout. Quite apart from the idea of raising money, it should go a long way towards stimulating that patriotism amongst the younger generation in the Empire, which, as Admiral Sturdee maintains, is as necessary for the future as it has been in the past.