STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 16

STRAND

“CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA’’ The talking film version of the war novel “The Case of Sergeant Grisha” is now at the Strand Theatre. The story opens on the Russian front, dealing with the period when the Russians were disheartened by the failure of the high command to supply them with munitions of war, in fact, even decent food and rations. The resultant debacle is now world history. Our story shows a typical case of a Polish soldier in the Russian ranks, as a prisoner in a German lumber camp, with only one desire in his heart, to go home and see his mother. He escapes but enters into tlie toils of a German Military Communique commanding that all Russian deserters who pierce the German lines are to be shot unless they surrender to the nearest German Military Police within three days of penetrating the lines. Complications enter through the lad’s ignorance of the order and his dread and fear of being returned once more to tho lumber camp prison is such that he travels under an assumed name, is arrested under that name and condemned to death. His tribunal is headed by Austrian officers under a German High Command. These more kindly disposed officers, on hearing his true name and after having him identified under his rightful name, endeavour to have the court martial reversed by a technicality. Here the grim lesson contained in the novel and the picture, “The Case of Sergenat Grischa,” is revealed and the machine like decision of the Prussian general in High Command and his harsh instructions brutally delivered that the decision of the court martial must be carried through enforce a situation which is full of tense moments for the spectators. The ensuing situations reveal lust of power and Prussian frightfulness with the mask off.

Excellent supports are also beingshown.