EASTERN FILM AT QUEEN’S DEALS WITH LIFE FROM UNUSUAL ANGLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18008, 19 November 1926, Page 5

EASTERN FILM AT QUEEN’S DEALS WITH LIFE FROM UNUSUAL ANGLE.

Somerset Maugham is well known both as a novelist and a playwright. In the first flight of the modern English school, he has developed a genius for character studies that is brilliant in its insight and depth of understanding. In both of his lines of endeavour he has the ability to make a perhaps rather simple plot a thing of the deepest interest, and all the time there is. in “ Infatuation.” a famous play c.f his that is showing in picture form at the tjueen's Theatre this week, this calculated interest and a faint touch of the writer's cynicism. “Caesar’s Wife ’’ was the play. ” Infatuation ” is the picture—both are wonderfully done. Second on the programme is Mary ( Bickford's colourful Spanish romance, “ Rosjta.” a story patterned after ” Maritana.” It is a very human drama that in the midst of its courtly brilliance and southern fire has an airy humour which relieves it of any suggestion of unduly heavy drama.