SETS NEW STANDARD.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 938, 7 December 1933, Page 3

SETS NEW STANDARD.

“ Squatter’s Daughter ” is Australia’s Best Yet.

Ronald Colman gives a great performance in “ The Masquerader.” the drama which will be shown finally tomorrow night at the Plaza Theatre.

“ The Squatter's Daughter,” which will begin at the Plaza Theatre on Saturday, is reported to be the best film yet evolved and produced in Australia. Moreover, its story and the amazing gallery of pictures involved are redolent

of the soil. It is an epic of pastoral life in the continent across the Tasman. Its action includes some wonderful and beautiful scenes of station life, the mustering of vast flocks of merino, glimpses of sweat-stained shearers in action, the Hacking of the wool, and its transport to the railway by twelve-horse teams, all depicted with amazing truth. The great bush fire sequences are positively terrifying in their stark realism. Viewing them on the screen, it is small wonder to learn that several accidents occurred in the filming of what was an actual fire in the Australian bush. Produced by Cinesound Productions, Ltd., the makers of “On Our Selection,” on an elaborate scale for world-wide pre-

sentation. this is a typically Australian story, rewritten and modernised for the talking screen. The colourful romance of the great wool industry is cleverly interwoven with real-life thrills in

■' The Squatter's Daughter,” which also delightfully reveals all the glory and grandeur of Australia's great natural wealth and beauty. Up to the present no Australian girl of any great photographic possibilities has been given a

chance t.o star in films produced in the Commonwealth. Many Australian girls have become famous in pictures from British International Studios, at Elstree, England—Nancy Brown, Betty Stockfeld and Judy Kelly, for instance—and

• 'inesound have actually blazed a trail for Australian youth, eager to win through in their own pictures. Jocelyn Ifowarth, their first ‘screen star, who plays the title role in “ The Squatter’s Daughter,” is a beautiful blonde, and is

certain to be a great favourite. The supporting cast is headed by Grant Lyndsay and Fred MacDonald <“ Dave ” of “On Our Selection ”). The story tells of a more or less bad young man who, during the absence of his father in England, stoops to low cunning and even treachery to gain possession of

” Enderby ” sheep station, owned by a fearless daughter of Australia. No other woman character player has established such a sound reputation on the Australian stage as Australia's own Katie Towers, who is seen in the role of the cook on the big sheep station, ” Waratah.” Actually the great sheep station and the beautiful homestead in

The Squatter’s Daughter” is " Goonoo Goonoo,” one of the richest and most picturesque of Australia's vast pastoral areas, about eighteen miles out of Tamworth, New South Wales.