“We Live Again” is A Triumph For the Stars

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 54, 6 March 1935, Page 5

“We Live Again” is A Triumph For the Stars

ANNA STEN AND FREDRIC MARCH APPEAR TOGETHER

(Regent: Screening Saturday.) Tho genius and colour of live

great personalities have been blended together to make one of the really great pictures of all time. Tiie illustrious quintet is made up or Leo Tolstoy, Somuel Goldwyn, Anna Sten, Fredric March and Koubeu Mamoulian —autnor, producer, stars and director, respectively, of “We Live Again, ’ ’ the fibnisation of Tolstoy’s immortal novel, “Resurrection, ’ ’ released through United Artists.

Goldwyn showed his usual keen judgment in choosing this powerful and beautiful story of Czarist Russia as the second vehicle of his-glamorous Russian star, Anna Sten, and the role of Ivatusha, the littlo peasant girl who loved and was betrayed by a Prince, could uot better have suited her peculiar talents and rich, earthy beauty, had it becu written to order for her. Alore effective and more appealing than ever, the beauty and fife that is Sten reaches its full flowering in this magnificent film.

Freckie March, her co-star, is also ideally cast and. gives tho performance of his distinguished cinematic career as tho handsome Prince Dmitri whom army life turns from tho idealistic young revolutionary who sincerely loves tho little peasant to tho clashing voluptuary who betrays her. The human, moving story of how, years later, he experiences a rude awakening when, as a member of a jury, he recognises Katusha in tho pitiful girl of tho streets being tried for a murder of which she is innocent, and gives up everything to follow her to Siberia, has been transcribed to tho screen with a sure sense of entertainment values by Preston Sturges, Maxwell Anderson and Leonard Praskins, and Mamoulian’s direction stands out as unquestionably tho supreme achievement of a brilliant career. .

Jane Baxter, Goldwyn’s lovely new British discovery who scored as Toni in “The Constant Nymph,” is splendid as Dmitri’s aristocratic fiancee, and C. Aubrey Smith turns in one of his matchless characterisations as her father, Princo Kortchagin. Sam Jaffe, Jessie Ralph, Ethel Grifiies, and the remaining members of the cast are uniformly excellent.

Beautifully mounted, with sets designed by Sergei Soudeikin and executed by Richard Day, and costumes designed by Omar Kiam, “We Live Again” creates a colourful and thrilling picture of old Russia which successfully sublimates all that may have been heavy or grim in the original, without sacrificing the inherent mood of the story which has endeared it to countless thousands of readers the world over.

The gorgeous photography by Gregg Poland is a joy to the eye and the heart. Some of his best effects are achieved in the scenes depicting the Eussian Easter midnight service, for which Mamaulian recruited his ‘actors’ from the Eussian colonies along the Pacific Coast.

Two features of special interest to music lovers arc the Eussiau A Capella Choir which, supplies a musical background for the beautiful and impressive Eussian Easter midnight service; and the colourful gipsy chorus led by Kina Kochetz, famous opera star, and Khmara, the world’s foremost interpreter and exponent of gipsy songs and mus ; c>

Anna Sten and Eredric March are the only professional actors who participate in the Easter Service, which is chanted entirely without instrumental accompaniment by voices to whom th 6 ritual is an inborn tradition. Led by a picked group of six men and twelve women, the celebrants, all gathered from the Eussian colonies which dot tho Pacific Coast, joined in creating a high point of religious song with their rendition of the Easter anthem, “Christos Voscrasia,” or “Christ Is Bisen.” Tho gipsy choral ensemble referred to provides the entertainment at an officers’ dinner, presided over by March in tho role of the reckless young Prince Dmitri.