A FILM MASTERPIECE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12453, 22 May 1926, Page 7

A FILM MASTERPIECE

SIR JOHN MARTIN HARVEY IN “THE ONLY WAY.” There are some astounding court scenes in First National’s twelve-reel masterpiece, “The Only Way,” featuring Sir John Martin Harvey, which will he presented at the Grand Opera House on Wednesday, June 2nd, in conjunction with the Sunbeam Children from Sydney in “The Wedding o( Baby Kerr.” Though fho countless scenes of compelling drama, thrilling action, and colourful romance that are afforded in “The Only Way” render it difficult to say which are the bigger scenes, there is one that will linger long after the final fade-out. It is the court scene, so prominent in this adaptation of Charles Dickens’s immortal work, “The Tale of Two Cities.” The fate of Charles Darnay hangs in the balance, and yet judge and jury alike are swayed by the moods of the public gallery, who one moment cry “To the guillotinol” and the noxt “To the arms of his sweetheart I” only to change again to the order for death. The episode where Sir John Martin Harvey, as Sidney Carton, from the witness-box, sways his hearers to the prisoner’s favour is a masterpiece of acting, even as it is also a masterpiece of descriptive literature. During the Grand Opera House season there will be two sessions daily, at 2.30 and 8, with an operatic orchestra in attendance at both sessions. Miss Frances Scully, producer of the Sunbeam Children in “The Wedding of Baby Kerr,” will arrive by the Ulimaroa next week, and this combined entertainment should meet with general approval.