"BLACK WATCH” TO BE SCREENED SOON AT CRYSTAL PALACE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18901, 28 October 1929, Page 7

"BLACK WATCH” TO BE SCREENED SOON AT CRYSTAL PALACE

Everybody who has seen the all-talk-ingr production, “ Black Watch,” declares that it is, in story, direction, staging: and speech, the greatest justification and triumph the new talking screen has yet done. The story is adapted from one by Talbot Mundy, is played !>y a cast of British artists, headed bv ,°. r .W'Laglen, an Englishman, and David Torrance, an Edinburgh •man, and has for its credo, learnt on the playing fields of England, that, where England demands anything o*f her sons, those sons obey. It is a theme that lends itself admirably to a finely restrained and dramatic treatment. The whole picture is characterised by excellent good taste, reticence and English good form. I? or all its colourful, imperial, traditional theme, it is never emotional, not even when Captain King, of the Black Watch, listens to the voice of duty, buries his heart in a Himalayan grave, and gets a D.S.O. for his services. The picture has some magnificent scenes. The regimental customs of the 42nd Highlanders (the Black Watch), their entraining for Flanders, the tense atmosphere of 1916 without the accompanving roll of the war-drums, and then, the diplomatic mission to the Kyber Pass and of what befel at the “ backdoor of India”—these are what make “Black Watch ” what it is. The box plans will open at The Bristol Piano Companv on Thursday morning.