ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 63, 14 February 1939, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

STATE THEATRE. “PRISON WITHOUT BARS.” “Prison "Without Bare,” which brings the new star Corinne Luchair, a cseventceny Air-old French girl, and the old star, Barry K. Baines, to Palmerston North audiences is Alexander Korda’s remaking of a French film, “Prison Sans Barreaux,’' and i«s described as a faithful rendering of that outxstanding picture into English. Certainly the film has brought with it a lot of the French feeling; it would be impossible to imagine the bevy of grim-faced, girl-slapping, bustling guardian*; of the girls’ reformatory in English guicse, while in a number of other ways the film strikes one a<s very French. The picture shoots the impact of a new and sympathetic personality upon a home where the regulations have been defied, and where complaints about discomforts have been greeted with blows. The philosophy of Mine. Appel, who runs the establishment, is that things must be made as unpleasant as possible for the girls so that they may not want to return. Actually she its making criminals of girle who have been sent to the reformatory because of a slip, and who find there the resentment that creates a rebel against society. Chief problem of these girls is Suzanne, who has been sentenced on a trumped-up charge because her stepmother was tired of her and who has been beaten and starved into sullen revolt. Yvonne Chanel, who is appointed as the new superintendent because of tho scandal caused by a suicide, triers to change this. It is> the testing of her methods, and the conflict between her and the .staff which go to make tho foundation of the picture. KOSY THEATRE. “TIIE ACCUSING FINGER.” The extent to which circumstances can weave a noose around an innocent man’s neck is dramatically portrayed in Paramount’s “The Accusing Finger,” a tense drama of circumstantial evidence, which screens to-night at the Kosy Theatre. With Paul Kelly as a ruthless public prosecutor who uses every legal device to rush men into gaol so that his perfect record for convictions can bo maintained, “The Accusing Finger” show's how he himself is caught in a mesh of circumstances which place him in the shadow of tlie electric chair. Kelly is in love with Marsha Hunt, his secretary, but cannot marry her because his wife, Bernadene l Hayes, refuses to give him a divorce. Kelly and Miss Hunt are confronted in a public restaurant by Miss Hayes, and he is overhoard threatening her. Hater he comes to her home and engages in a spirited argument with her. Several minutes later she is found dead with a bullet, fired from Kelly’s revolver, in her heart. Kelly tells the police there was a burglar in the house, but so perfect is the case made made out against him by witnesses that he is sentenced to die. Taylor, an investigator, believes in Kelly’s innocence, lie starts the almost hopeless task of finding the killer. Miss Hunt and Taylor come to love eaeh other during the investigation, and it is not an easy thing they have to tell Kelly. “THE BIG BROADCAST.”

One of the greatest casts of radio headliners ever assembled to make a motion picture will be soon and heard as the second attraction. Paramount’s “The Big Broadcast,” starts its triumphal run.