MAJESTIC THEATRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 188, 11 August 1939, Page 9

MAJESTIC THEATRE

“CONFESSIONS OI A NAZI SPY’’ Taking the revelations of the sensational German spy case of last year, Warner Brothers-First National nave produced a iiim which is a direct attack on the German Government, on its system of espionage and its political philosophy, and the result may be seen to-uay at the Majestic Theatre. The film play is submitted as a documentary film rather than as fiction but it makes splendid entertainment, and it may be said, for those who are without knowledge of the spy trials in which officers of the 1 German Government were indicted in I their absence, that the general outline j of the story follows the disclosures in the spy case, that utterances which purport to reveal Nazi philosophy do reveal it and that even such apparent excursions into fiction as the fact that a key witness is too sick to come ashore from a German liner after his flight from the United States is no more than the truth. The effect is enhanced by the technique employed. The film gets down to business at once, there are no credit titles and no cast given, and the figure of {in announcer recalling the plot prepares the way for the sensational disclosures which follow. These disclosures are made by use of a first-rate cast, including Edward G. Robinson, Paul Lukas, Francis Lederer, George Sanders and Henry O'Neill, and 100 others splendidly chosen and fitting the personalities given them to perfection. From time to time, as the film advances, use is made of newsreels of shots of Hitler and Nazi leaders in action with true fanaticism, and of German troops on the march. And as the action proceeds it is linked together by comments and explanations of the announcer. The result is a. film which has been greeted with cheers in the United States and which, here also, provokes loud applause at such moments as the round-up of the Gestapo men. Incredible as it may appear, there is no more than the truth in the representation of a captain of a German liner taking orders from secret police on his ship, or in the organisation of the Nazi camps in the United States and the busy gathering of military information about a Power on the other side of the Atlantic. Nor are the methods employed by the spies mere fiction; there really was a plot to kidnap an American officer in the attempt to steal mobilisation plans from him.