BIG CAST IN BIG PICTURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19840, 14 May 1927, Page 8

BIG CAST IN BIG PICTURE

EVERY PLAYER IN “BEAU GESTE” A STAR. In these days of big pictures and big casts, it really wants something exceptional to stand out to warrant extra comment. Such a picture is “Beau Geste,” the Paramount picture wh>ch opens a season at the Municipal Pictures next Tuesday. Presented with a glowing, spectacular scene .as a prologue, the picture itself has the tense theme of brother love. The depth of love, the pathos of the scenes, and the emotion of the picture rhake tears well to the eyes. The story has been faithfully adapted? from the novel by P. C. Wren, and interpreted by a cast that leaves nothing to be desired. Ronald Colman is “Beau” Geste, and Neil Hamilton and Ralph Forbes, his brothers, Digby and John. Noah Beery, Norman Trevor, William Powell, Alice Joyce, Alary Brian and Victor AfacLaglen are lhe other players who have important roles. The story centres round the mysterious happenings at a post of the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara. Attacked by Arabs, the fort makes a gallant stan4, and when the relieving force arrives they find only dead men there. A trumpeter disappears in the fort and the Major has hardly left when the fort goes up in smoke. It is mysterious. T*nc three brothers Michael, called “Beau,” Digby and John, leave the home of Brandon Abbas, because each wishes to share the blame, if any, of the disappearance of the famous sapphire the “Blue Water.” Joining the Foreign Legion, Beau and Digby finrl themselves under the command of the brutal Lejaune at Zinderneuf. Digby is the trumpeter who scales the walls to find that Beau is dead in the fort, John missing and Lejaune with a French bayonet through his breast. He makes ready for a burial of Beau and the major thinks that he has disappeared and certainly when he enters the fort a little later, Digby who has climbed over the wall and so escaped, is indeed missing, but not before he has set fire to the fort to give his brother a Viking’» funeral. Out in the desert he finds John. who. as the last man left alive, found Lejaune robbing the dead Beau has killed him. But who stole the “Blue Water?” That would spoil the whole story and picture to tell you. Herbert Brenon, the director, deserves great credit for his still and masterly direction of this Paramount picture*