“IN OLD CHICAGO”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 7

“IN OLD CHICAGO”

ATTRACTION FOR OCTAGON Screen spectacle, with all the elements that go into the making of entertainment, is featured in “In Old Chicago,” which will have its New Zealand premiere to-day at the _ Octagon Theatre. Not since the ‘ Birth of a Nation," it is claimed, has such completely overwhelming grandeur graced a motion picture screen. That it is derived from the fury of an holocaust which wiped out a middlewestern metropolis is only part of the film. The true beauty lies in the love story. No less brilliant has been the direction of Henry King, who developed the personalities of the O’Learys. He keeps a lot of movement in the early sequences, and steps up his tempo to move fluently into the terror, tragedy and flight of the fire. For the realism that wells up from the screen in these stirring, blazing scenes. Bruce Humberstone.’s direction earns praise. Dramatic laurels are given to Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, Alice Brady, Brian Donlevy and Andy Devine. Miss Faye is revealed in “In Old Chicago as the soubrette in a gaudy, glittery saloon of 1871, and is the tempestuous sweetheart of the saloon’s owner. Tyrone Power, takes the role of Dion O Leary. Don Ameche, as Jack O’Leary, the direct antithesis of Dion, gives a sincere performance as the reformer. Alice Brady is said to give one of the finest performances of her dramatic career as the hard-working, outspoken Molly O’Leary. The strange O’Leary tribe fights tooth and nail at times, and the climax comes when Dion has his brother perform the marriage ceremony which makes Belle Fawcett the bride of Dion, so that she could not testify to Dion’s political chicanery. From here the story rises to its climax in the fire scenes.