ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 300, 18 November 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

REGENT THEATRE. “THE MORTAL STORM.” “Tho Mortal Storm,” a powerful drama screening to-night at tho Regent Theatre, must be considered ns much more than propaganda. No honest picture of Nazi Germany can help being propaganda, in the sense that it exposes Nazism; but some of the pictures built-up on Hitler’s Germany are only incidentally propagandist, and possess a wider and deeper meaning for humanity—a meaning that is not limited to the German crisis, and which is not cramped by time and space. Among these wider and better pictures “The Mortal Storm” takes a high place. It brings the audience back to that primitive fear which cursed mankind in its infancy, and which follows mankind still. At the outset tho audience is told, by an ‘off-stage’ voice, that “when man was new upon the earth he was frightened by the dangers of tho elements.” (Modern example, the respect of Maoris for thunder storms.) But as man grew older, he created shelters against the wind and rain, and even harnessed the lightning, and ho ceased tn kill his fellow man as a “sacrifice” to appease tho lightning god. “And yet,” continues the “off-stage” voice, “there remained within man himself elements strong as tho wind and terrible as tlie lightning. . .The tale wo are about to toll is of the mortal storm in which man finds himself to-day. Again man is crying, ‘I must kill my fellow man.’ The story of our picture asks, ‘liow soon will man find wisdom in his heart, and build a lasting shelter against his ignorant fears ?” The “olf-stago” voice is quoted because its words serve—quite as well as any other words—to put “The Mortal Storm” on a high picture plane, and Well above mere propaganda. The primitive brutishness of Nazism is displayed to illuminate the deeper mystery of man’s struggle on earth. The blood ritual of Nazi racialism is made to clash with the biological finding of a Jewish professor, who says that science ' finds no biological difference between the blood of so-called Aryan Germans and the blood of Jews and other nonAryan Germans. In revenge, the bloodconscious Nazis demand the spilling of Jewish blood.

STATE THEATRE. “MY FAVOURITE WIFE.” “My Favourite Wife,” which shows today at the State Theatre, brings back Lone Dunne and Gary Grant to the screen in a gray sophisticated romantic comedy in which, these Hollywood luminaries hit a stride which should carry them to top comedy awards for the year, A large share of their success in this breezy film is duo to the hilarious story which was especially designed for the stars’ talents by Bella and Samuel Spewack. Miss Dunne is cast as a wife presumably lost at sea whose husband, Gary Grant, has her declared logally dead after seven years’ absence and then marries Gail Patrick. The newly weds no sooner depart on their honeymoon than the first wife returns, very much alive. She was rescued from an unebartered Pacific island on which she had been marooned all these years with Randolph Scott, portraying a handsome scientist. She overtakes the honeymooners at Yosemite hotel, and presents herself to her startled husband. Unable to blurt out tho truth to his bride, Grant tries to keep bis first wife hidden —with some hilarious and disastrous complications. Now starts a mad pace which is heightened until the uproarious climax. The kissless bride and her distraught husband flee home only to find Miss Dunno awaiting them and posing as an old friend of the family. And soon after the double-groom learns that his first wife and the virile explorer were alone on that island for seven years ! Contributing lavishly to tho laughs are Gail Patrick as the bride who can’t comprehend her husband’s sudden aloofness and Randolph Scott, whose desire to marry Grant’s first wife after being stranded with her for seven years aggravates the burden the jealous husband is already carrying.