CINEMA PROGRAMME

Taranaki Daily News, 12 July 1935, Page 7

CINEMA PROGRAMME

PROGRAMME WITH VARIETY. GOOD FILMS AT STATE THEATRE. “Dangerous Comers,” a psychological drama, and “Life Begins at 40,” a humorous tale set in a small country town, gives variety to-the double-feature programme at the State Theatre. “Dangerous Comers” preaches the moral of letting sleeping dogs lie. Faithful to the play by J. B. Priestley, upon which it is based, it has little action except a theft and an apparent suicide at its beginning. ’ Through a chance remark about a curious cigarette box the circumstances of the death are unfolded revealing, incidentally, the strange secrets in the lives of the dead man and the six people most closely, connected with him. Priestley’s play is so well constructed and his psychological bypaths so ingeniously twisted that the film, although the action only twice moves from one room, has the excitement of a fast-moving “thriller.” Eight players comprise the cast, prominent among them being Melvyn Douglas and Virginia Bruce, who give excellent performances. lan Keith is uncannily good as the unbalanced neurotic whose death is the cause of the whole situation, and Conrad Nagel is the man who lives in a world of illusion and, by his own meddling, destroys it. Human interest of entirely different type is provided by Will Rogers in “Life Begins at Forty.” Rogers, the happy-go-lucky editor who conducts his paper on oddly unbusinesslike but apparently passable lines, mumbles and slouches through a picture that is amusing, light entertainment from beginning to end.