"Kinematic Event Of Great Importance”

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7070, 1 February 1933, Page 5

"Kinematic Event Of Great Importance”

RONALD COLMAN SUPERB IN "ARROWSMITH” AT REGENT,

Portraying one of the most striking characters in modem fiction, Ronald Colman comes to the Screen of the Regent to-night in the title-role of "Arrowsmith,” the motion picture which Samuel Goldwyn made from the famous novel by Sinclair Lewis. Thus Colman fans will again have an opportunity to see him returning to serious emotional impersonations, after his recent successes in the line of light comedy.

Ronald Colman has, however displayed a great versatility in his long screen career, and played great varieties of parts since he first left the legitimate stage for motion pictures. The romantic dash of "Beau Geste,” the comedy melodrama of "Bulldog Drummond," the tragic seriousness of "Tho Dark Angel" and "Condemned,” the light farce of "The Devil to Pay,” have all shown different angles of the actor who has been called the premier performer of talking pictures. Critics have already hailed "Arrowsmith” as one of the most important pictures of the yeaT, and Sinclair Lewis himself, after witnessing its New YoTk premiere, acknowledged publicly that it had succeeded in doing everything he had tried to do in the book. The distinction of its story, the importance of its cast, and the acclaim with which it has been received combine to make it a kinematic event of great importance.

Helen Hayes, the stage star who recently triumphed in her first screen appearance in "The Sin of Madelon Claudet,’’ plays opposite Ronald Colman in the role of the devoted wife who risks her life for her husband’s career. Richard Bennett, father of Constance, Joan and Barbara Bennett, has a major role as Sondelius, the plague-fight-ing Swede, and A. E, Anson, an eminent stage figure making his motion picture debut, has another rich character role.

Myrna Loy, Florence Britton, Claude King and Alee B. Francis take important parts, and several of the minor Toles are filled by the same galaxy of expert actors who made every character in Samuel Goldwyn’s "Street Sccie” an individual event.

The story of "Arrowsmith” is the story of one man’s devotion and ambition in the battle of humanity against the death-dealing plagues which have always been the scourge of mankind. It sweeps from the mid-western American countryside to a tropical island in the West Indies, where young Dr. Arrowsmith and his colleagues go to battle against the black death. His relations with the little nurse he marries as a struggling country doctor, continuing throughout the picture, weave a broad current of romance through its stirring scenes.

"Arrowsmith” as a novel is acknowledged by most critics to be the finest work of Sinclair Lewis, its author. It won a Pulitzer Prize on publication, only to have Mr Lewis refuse to accept the award as not representing his work. Last year his eminence as an internationally important writer was recognised by the award of the Nobel Prize for literature, the greatest such award iu the world, previously won by mo other American.

John Ford, who has been one of the ibest-known directors in motion pictures ever since he did "The Iron Horse,” directed "Arrowsmith” for Samuel Goldwyn.