ENTERTAINMENTS.

Waipa Post, Volume 39, Issue 3088, 12 December 1929, Page 5

ENTERTAINMENTS.

“MADAME X.” A stage play that has probably enthralled more audiences than any drama of modern time is the basis of the latest sensation of the talking screen, “ Madame X,” which was introduced to the Te Awamutu public at the Empire Theatre on Tuesday, and has its final screening to-night. “ Madame X ” started its career in the French language, under the title “ La Femme X,” and that great actress, Sarah Bernhardt, used it for a season as a starrinfg vehicle. In 1910, Henry W. Savage had it translated and brought to New York, and in 1918 a revival of the play was staged with Pauline Frederick as “ Madame X.” And now the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios have given to the world the famous play in a talking picture, which scored an instantaneous triumph from crowded houses. The story opens in Paris, and follows the tragic Madame X in her dramatic wanderings to China, the Islands, South America, and other colourful countries, showing in vivid and terrible fashion her slow degradation to the depths of despair, where she commits murder. This brilliant talking version of the famous play presents the old drama in a glamorous new dress. It retains all the drama that made the original a classic of the stage, but it presents it in the new swiftly-moving structure of the screen. The acting in the screen play was splendid. . .That accomplished actress, Ruth Chatterton, rose to great heights as the beautiful heroine, who, beneath her ggwly, temptress exterior, had the soul of an angel; The audience followed her restless beauty to the far places of the world, lived her amazing life, and even cried with her as she braved, the world of men. Truly, “ Madame X ” is a great emotional play. Splendid, too, was the fine done by Lewis Stone, as Floriot7""the husband; Raymond. Hackett, as Ithe son; Holmes Herbert, as Noel; rEugenie Besserer, as Rose, the nursep-Mitchell Lewis, as Canby; Claude King, as the prosecutor, and Richard.; Carle, as the comical 'blackmailer, a. X ” is certainly unique >nmopg .screen dramas, in that it ; is : --the ; ;first com-/; binatidh? of the: tec3*ni®ue’Qf the' silent screen and the jju.gsfciofis.ble if^eyeh^ -di,vine- Sarah £■—kgave aval of" who kills,