“Journey’s End”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 27

“Journey’s End”

FILM OF GREAT WAR PLAY MAKES DEEP IMPRESSION ON CRITIC IN i LONDON

“WHOLE FILM IS ENGLISH” The film of Mr. R. C. Sherriff’s war play, “Journey’s End,” presented at the Tivoli Theatre, Is the most moving thing I have seen or read or heard in months, writes a London reviewer. There are moments in it which would be unbearable were it not for the tenderness with which they are treated; moments In which friends—dead now for nearly fifteen years—become again incarnate in those shadows of tortured officers you see on the screen. Its tender reality is its salvat.on. Mr. Sherrift' told me at the end of the film that Ihe picture had added to the play’s beauty and expression. I thought that the film’s power would consist in its vistas of the struggles of armies. I was wrong. Its intensity and its drama are in the heart of one man alone—Stanhope, bearing that mark of suffering which came to be the sign of company commanders in France. Stanhope is the personification of a thousand company commanders who, suffering all the torments of tortured nerves, still had the job of leading four platoons, and did that job. In “Journey’s End” there is an eternal moment to those men with the semblance of physical fitness, but with spirits worn incredibly near to break-ing-point who still summoned to themselves the power of leading others. ■‘Journey’s End,” as a film, is a brave conception and a magnificent accomplishment. Mr. Colin Clive plays Stanhope worthily. I can think of no greater praise.