OUTSTANDING TALKIE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 457, 19 May 1932, Page 3

OUTSTANDING TALKIE.

•* The Blue Danube," a British and Dominions’ release, which heads the programme at the Theatre Royal, combines marvellous music, clever acting and capable players. The Royal Hungarian Tzigane Band provides the ingredients for a musical feast. The principals in the cast are Dorothy Boucliier. Joseph Schildkraut, Brigitte Helm and Desmond Jeans, all of whom are well known. The supporting programme contains a number of interesting items. "ONCE A LADY.” One of those events looked forward to by movie millions, a new Ruth Chatterton picture, will begin at the Theatre Royal on Saturday. The newest Paramount production for the " first lady ” of films is titled “ Or.ce A Lady,” and is a melange of the dramatic material which this emotional actress so effectively handled in “ Madame X,” “ Sarah and Son,” and “The Better Wife.” Although Miss Chatterton has been surrounded with a notable and gifted cast, including a goodly sprinkling of English celebrities who ideally suit the British environment of the early action, it is again the fine sense of dramatic values which the star possesses which carries off the honours. The story is of a Russian adventuress transplanted from Paris by the wooing of an English son of wealth. The changed environment, with the husband’s disapproving family alienating the affection of a daughter from her mother, and a moment of indiscretion with a former admirer on the eve of an important election in which the young man is interested, provokes a break up. Reported killed in a train wreck, the outcast wife remains “ dead,” becoming a famous butterfly in Paris, but jealously watching the career of her daughter from a distance. Tiie manner in which the husband's faulty divorce decree, fear of scandal, and the woman’s anonymous devotion to her grown daughter are dramatically woven into a happy ending for the second generation make an impressive climax.