BRILLIANT WORK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 23 May 1936, Page 9

BRILLIANT WORK

Harry Baur, the French stage actor, makes his English screen appearance as the peasant-profiteer Brioukow in “Moscow Nights,” a most interesting production. Here is a character study new in technique and compelling in its vigour. Gross, humorous, pathetic, forceful, Brioukow is an astounding feat. As brilliant in its way is the bitter young officer of Lawrence Oliver —a young player too long absent from the screen. Olivier’s charm and vivid dexterity has gained much from his recent London stage work. Athene Seyler, as the focus of this spy drama, set in Russia during the war, gives a splendid performance. Against these actors, Penelope Dudley Ward makes a painfully poor showing. She is an adenoidal and apathetic heroine in the main, though she has the attraction of gauche youth. Anthony Asquith’s direction of “Moscow Nights” is deliberately impressionistic. He delights in the Continental technique—a method often effective, but sometimes irritating in its repetition of scenes and its tricks of montage. This method heightens, however, the gambling and carousal scenes, and suits Baur admirably. V H- # * Tlie screen is probably the ideal medium for Shakespearean poetry because the camera and the microphone not only permit, but demand, a simple and intimate style of acting and j delivery of lines.—Norma Shearer, i * # v- ¥

Pin not going to write any more plays. It is not a gentleman’s job—and I am now only the ghost of a dramatist.—Clifford Bax.