AMUSEMENTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19904, 14 September 1934, Page 7

AMUSEMENTS

“COLONEL BLOOD” AT REGENT thrilling spy drama on SATURDAY “Colonel Blood,” an unusual adventure film, starring Anne Grey and Frank Cellier, will have its final screenings at the Regent to-day. Cellier’s work is outstanding. His nimble wit and never-ceasing flow of humour win the approval of the audience from the outset. It would be difficult to find an action more suitable to this difficult role. The whole story revolves around Blood’s doings, and not once does Cellier let his producers down. He is a fine swordsman and in one scene gives a great exhibition of this almost forgotten art. On Secret Sendee” What is considered to be the most engrossing spy drama yet written for the films is to be screened at the Regent Theatre to-morrow. It is a British production entitled “On Secret Service,” and features the charming star of “Red Wagon,” Greta Nissen with Carl Diehl, a previously unheard of star, who has been acclaimed by British audiences as greater than Conrad Veidt, who gave a remarkable performance recently in “The Wondering Jew.” The picture moves from one piquant situation to another with an increasing tempo and the final climax is one which is calculated to give picturegoers a feeling of having been given entertainment well out of the ordinary film fare. “ON THE AIR” AT MAJESTIC ANNA STEN TO-MORROW The brilliant musical comedy "On the Air,” will receive its final Timaru presentation at the Majestic to-night. “Nana” Samuel Goldwyn has at last brought Anna Sten to the screen in her first English-speaking picture. This is United Artists' version of Emile Zola’s classic, "Nana,” which will open at the Majestic to-morrow. The painstaking preparations for the debut of this blonde young actress from Soviet Russia have been more than repaid. Throughout a performance which makes big demands, her language is flawless, with just that quaint little foreign accent which lends attractiveness. But in the beauty and talent of the star itself one soon loses all thought of the word-medium she is using. In Anna Sten, Goldwyn has given the screen a star of the first magnitude, a star of whom much will assuredly be heard in the future. As the leading character of Zola’s novel, the girl who rises from street gamine to music-hall star and then becomes the toast of Paris, Anna Sten is a positive revelation. Not only does she look well and act well, but she sings well into the bargain. She is the central gem in a wholly brilliant film. Mae Clarke and Muriel Kirkland, as Nana’s cronies of the old boulevard days, who benefit by her success and ill repay her by hastening the tragic end of her great love, prove splendid foils for the Russian’s ravishing beauty; Phillips Holmes is charming and romantic as Lieutenant George Muffat, and Lionel Atwill is very convincing as Lionel Muffat, his elder brother, who also falls under Nana’s spell. The whole show has been produced with a great faithfulness to detail and the audience is given many excellent glimpses of Parisian life in the ‘seventies.

AUDIBERT-JENNER RECITAL A musical event of considerable importance will take place at the Scottish Hall on Tuesday night when Miss Cecily Audibert, of Christchurch, soprano, and Mr Ernest Jenner, A.R.A.M., L.R.A.M., pianist, will present a carefully selected programme of works. Miss Audibert is a pupil of Signor Enrico Riggatieri of Milan, and she studied extensively in Australia. Since her return to New Zealand she has appeared with great success for the Royal Christchurch Musical Society, the Male Voice Choir, and the Orchestral Society, Mr Jenner, who is instructor of Music in Schools throughout the South Island, was solo pianist in concertos under Sir Henry Wood, Sir Hamilton Harty and Eugene Goossens in London and Liverpool. Since coming to New Zealand in 1928 he has made a name for himself in musical circles, which have been the richer for hearing his Greig Concerto with the Philharmonic Orchestra and Caesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations with Leon de Mauny’s Symphony Orchestra.