WONDERFUL FILM SHOWN AT GRAND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18546, 21 August 1928, Page 7

WONDERFUL FILM SHOWN AT GRAND.

“Metropolis,” the film now showing at the Grand Theatre is claimed, and perhaps with justice, to be the greatest effort which has yet come to the screen. So different is it from the ordinary run of films that there are no points on which it can be compared with them. “Metropolis” is a piece of artistry which gives the screen a new meaning. C onception and production are carried out on a colossal scale, a shade of meaning being provided for every mind. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. Everywhere it has been shown “Metropolis” has had a wonderful reception and its almost overpowering appeal well warrants the lavish praise critics have given it. The story is very simple, but is acted with such gripping earnestness that a highly fantastic setting serves as a background to bring out with tremendous power the meaning of the film. On a well-known theme, the story takes the beholder into a vast city of the future, and here the genius of the producer has had full scope. The result is that while every scene is fantastic in the extreme, there is the touch of human reality which saves the film from becoming boring in its presentation of mere splendour, and raises it to a wonderful height. There were few who saw the iiliil last night who did not Completely forget that they were loking at a moving picture. Acting, production and photography all conspired to take the mind off the mechanical business and train it on to the story. Of trxie German type, the drama has no relief. From the beginning of the picture to the end, the attention is riveted on the sequence of events depicted. As a film of the future, “Metropolis” of course deals with huge skyscrapers, and wonders of mechanics and transportation, and it is in these scenes that the imagination of the producer has run riot. One is taken to the top of enormous buildings, breathlessly high, and again plunged into the bowels of the earth below a great city, among colossal machines attended by a puny but sin* ister race of men. Actually, the story is based on the old saw that love conquers everything, but it is by no means the conventional rendering which one generally connects with the films. There is a powerful moral in the story, no less significant by its age. With such a tremendous canvas to work on, only genius could save itself from looking ridiculous. Scene after scene leaves the beholder gasping at the sheer greatness of the conception, but never is reality lost, never does the mind, wrapped up in the power of the production, lose touch with the simple story underlying it. From beginning to end this story, laid in highly impossible settings, holds the interest of those who see it. The whole moves with the smoothness and precision of a machine. to a climax which i& striking by reason of its very simplicity. The simplest of themes forms the end, two men fighting on a rooftop with naked fists, for a woman. “Metropolis” is a great film. A special musical programme is contributed by the Grand Quality Orchestra.