“Captain of the Guard” Biggest Musical Drama

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7297, 6 August 1930, Page 5

“Captain of the Guard” Biggest Musical Drama

Commencing at tlio Regent for ' a three-niglit season, with a matinco today, “Captain of the Guard” is the largest all-sound production so far attempted in the motion picturo industry. It is a dramatic musical spectacle of the French Revolution, co-starring John Boles, singing star of “The Desert Song,” and Laura la Plante. The “Marseillaise” itself, the dramatic national hymn of the French nation, is dramatised both in pictures and music to a height of intensity that sweeps every emotion before it. This song is the theme behind the picture, the immortal music that carries forward the beautiful love story between Boles, as Rougct do Lisle and Miss la Plante as Mario Marnay, who becomes the flaming leader of the early revolutionists, known to them and to. the w’holo of France as “The Torch.” It is “La Marseillaise” also which carries forward, the tremendous drama of the revolution itself, pictured in the film by huge battle scenes between the revolutionary mobs and the King's trained guards. It is to the newly-created, inspiring tune of “La Marseillaise” that the heroic men of Marseilles, marching night and day as they sing it, reach their revolutionary brethren just- as they aro being driven back by the King’s soldiers and carry them on to victory with t-heir invinciblo song. Interspersed throughout tho picture are gorgeous spectacle scenes in music of tho old peasant folk dances by torchlight, of the quaint customs and dress of the rustics, and beautiful, romantic love scenes between Boles and Miss la Plante. His magnificent voice is heard to its greatest possible advantage in tho varying moods of the picture; in the tender love songs of Cadman, and singing “La Marseillaise” itself as he composes it.