“MADAME X” SUCCESS

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1929, Page 13

“MADAME X” SUCCESS

POWERFUL TALKING PICTURE. Madame X is a remarkable talking picture. The chief reasons aro that Ruth Chatterton is an extremely clever actress, that the plot is an unusually powerful one and that the reproduction —voices and photography —is excellent. No other talking picture that has been presented in New Plymouth, has possessed so strong an emotional appeal and yet has, withal, been played with such dignity and ability. All the voices are pleasant to the ear, but Ruth Chattelton's is something more. She is an English actress of culture. She dominates the whole picture and in her the talkie industry has found a jewel indeed. Madame X made a highly favourable impression on a crowded audience at the People’s, New Plymouth, on Saturday night. Ruth Chatterton is the young wife of an attorney in Paris—a man devoted to his duty and stern in his ideals of what a wifo should bo and do. She has different ideas of wedded bliss and yearns for that'quality in her husband that she calls “love.” The end of it all —or rather the beginning—is that she leaves him and her child for another man.

Five years later sho returns to Paris and hears from a nurse that the boy is grievously ill. With only one thought in her mind she goes to her old home and enters while her earlier husband is sleeping, worn out with caring for the boy.. Ho awakens and sternly forbids her to see the boy. In an emotional scene it is disclosed .that they have been divorced and that her second husband is dead. He orders her from his home without seeing her boy and she goes. . Then commences her drift. Utterly broken of heart she wanders about the earth a mysterious woman of unknown character. Sho is shown in South America, in China, gradually sinking lower and losing her charms—she becomes a drunken, undesirable object, living on her wits and consorting with a class to which she was once so superior.

At length she falls in with a schemer who scents the fruits of blackmail. Plying her with drink he takes her back to Paris, where her first husband has become attorney-general, and in her drunken stupor she reveals to the schemer her real identity. Sobered by the disclosure of his nefarious plans she sees the danger to her husband and her boy. She pleads with the villain to save them—in vain. He strikes her down and rushes to the door, on his way to the attorney-g&neral. Driven mad with grief and alcohol she seizes revolver and shoots him in the doorway. She gives herself lip to the police. There follows the most powerful part of tho play. Picture this distraught woman on trial for murder with her husband on the bench and her own son — ignorant of the fact that she -is his mother —pleading for her life! The play develops rapidly to a climax that is startling and which visibly affected Saturday night’s audience. It is a smashing finale to a cleverly constructed play in tho hands of an outstanding cast. '■ ’■ .

Tho play gives great scope for Ruth Chatterton to display her talent —in her drift down from the life of a lady in a luxurious home through all the stages of life to the gutter—she lives them all like .a native, and she makes the picture an entertainment of high quality. It is eloquent of a moral, but the moral does not obtrude. It is entertainment that lifts the talking picture to a high plane, and it fully deserves the success it is bound to enjoy for the remainder of its season.