" BIRD OF PARADISE "

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21345, 21 November 1932, Page 11

" BIRD OF PARADISE "

NEW FILM FOR ST. JAMES'

King Vidor, a distinguished director of the silent era, has achieved a masterpiece of emotional and pictorial beauty in "Bird of l'aradise," which will replace "Brother Alfred" at St. James* Theatre on Friday. So enthusiastically was the picture received by American critics that the Literary Digest in an article "Another Trip to Paradise" gives a resume of the more notable reviews.

The journal comments: "Ever since that early Novarro film, 'Where the Pavement Ends,' we have seen recurring versions of South Sea life. Screen-play, travelogue, even J. B. Priestley's latest novel, 'Faraway,' bring us the waving palms and the laughing Polynesians. The climax of romance and beauty was thought to have been reached in 'Tabu,' the last work of the lamented Muryau, but King Yidor, called 'tho Ace of Hollywood.' has resurrected Richard Walton Tally's old play, made glamorous by Ruth Chatterton, and now 'Bird of Paradise,*• screened by R.K.O. Radio, has brought together more South Sea perhaps than all. its predecessors together, and, for good measure, added the disguised Polynesian glamour of Dolores del Rio and the Nordic long-leggedness of Joel McCrea, who grew up around Hollywood. "It takes Richard Watts, jun., of the New York Herald Tribune, to remove from our minds all doubts, if we had any, of the glamour of del Rio: 'lt is, as you must' havo seen iti the advertisements, Miss.Dolores del Rio, the exquisite Latin, the bringer of more beauty from Mexico than Diego Rivera, who plays, the tragic Luana of the story—a role which Miss Lauretta Taylor once glorified. Miss del. Rio always has seemed to me the most beautiful actress in the cinema—which, as you know, has often been rather handicapped by the prevalence of goodlooking women—and I have always thought that she was a reasonably good actress.

" 'ln "Bird of Paradise" she is perhaps no more skilful nor experienced than usual, but her dusky, alien beauty fits in so effectively with her role that she is more admirable than ever, and succeeds in providing more loveliness for the film than director and cameramen managed, despite their million-dollar budget. '