NOW A BRITISH SUBJECT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 16

NOW A BRITISH SUBJECT

Elizabeth Bergner Breaks Long Spell Elizabeth Bergner, now a British subject, returned to the screen in January, after an absence of more than eighteen months, as two sisters in "Stolen Life.” The last picture in which Miss Bergner appeared was “Dreaming Lips,” shown in London in February, 1937. The making of a Bergner film is usually a “hush, hush” affair and, as the story which Margaret Kennedy has adapted is by a Czechoslovakian novelist, K. Benes, only a limited number of people in this country know it in any detail. What can be said is that it tells of two sisters in love with the same man. One envies the other, but when dramatic circumstances reveal the truth she finds that the actuality of her sister’s life is very different from from her own dreams.

“That’s what enthralled me in this plot,” says Miss Kennedy, who, as the author of “Escape Me Never,” should understand the fitting of the Bergner personality. “The psychology is universal. We think we know all about the lives of those nearest and dearest to us. But how little of the truth we may realise! If we tried to live another’s life we should find that we had to take on many things we had not bargained for. We should be involved in a hundred complications. “Envying another person, we little guess what may be hidden from us. The life of another individual is like an iceberg; one-tenth visible and nine-tenths submerged. What is apparent—often beautiful, sunlit—is a very small part of the whole.” “This idea is summarised in the film by the father of the two sisters, when he says: ‘lf you steal another person’s life you steal their fate. You steal their joys. You steal thensorrows. You steal their virtues. You steal then- sins.’ ” These words by Miss Kennedy give

the nearest disclosure we have had yet of the scope of this latest Bergner performance. Miss Bergner herself describes Miss Kennedy’s scenario as brilliant with humour, comedy, drama and a touch of tragedy. Probably it will have a touch of waifdom, too, though it is asserted that her appearance in the two characters is different from anything she has done before.