ENTERTAINMENTS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21160, 9 July 1940, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMMES THEATRE ROYAL “Rewi’s Last Stand,” which will open a season at Hamilton today*, was privately screened in Wellington to an audience which included Mr John Grierson, the Canadian Government film commissioner, who has produced many successful films. Addressing the audience after the screening, Mr Grierson said that it was more important that New Zealanders should have produced that film than that they should see a hundred films from Hollywood. Not that good films were not made in Hollywood, for they were, but because in the film they had just seen the nation had expressed itself. The j film is based on the Battle of Orakau, j made famous by the reply of the Maori chief to the soldiers’ offer of | a truce that the Maoris would fight 1 on for ever. A story of love between a half-caste girl and a pakeha has been woven into the authentic historic narrative to give the film a wider appeal than it would otherwise have. “Rewi’s Last Stand” is a sound film, and music by Alfred Hill is an important contribution to its success. Scenes from Maori life are prominent, including dances, hakas, chants, and games. The acting is competent and the photography excellent. STATE THEATRE “Island In The Sky,” with Gloria ' Stuart and Michael Whalen in their finest roles, provides a grand combination of romance and excitement. Beginning with more different angles than Hollywood has put in a story in many* a day, this film starts out with what it calls “just a routine murder case.” Whalen, as special investigator for the district attorney’s office, has taken his secretary to the “Island In The Sky” Club—7o stories up— to announce to her that they are going on a honeymoon the following day. Just as they get into the stride of celebrating their engagement murder strikes—and the honeymoon is off while Whalen hastens to make a quick clean-up of a routine murder case. “She’s Got Everything,” a merry comedy, features Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond. ROXY THEATRE “Brother Rat,” starring Priscilla ' Lane and Wayne Morris, and “Television Spy,” will be screened today. “Brother Rat,” scenarised by Richard Macauley and Jerry Wald from the original play by John Monks, Jnr., and Fred F. Finklehoffe, revolves around the mishaps of one of the lads who has disobeyed a rule of the Military Institute and has | secretly taken himself a bride. Not i only that, but he is about to become a father. His pals stick to him and get him out of his jam. “Television .Sky” is a drama which j plunges boldly into the world of to- | morrow, one which shows a brilliant | young scientist fighting courageously I to keep his discoveries in the field ! of long-range television out of the hands of enemy powers, which finds j him falling in love with a lovely girl j via television across three thousand miles of space. CIVIC THEATRE While “For Freedom” is timely, events have moved so swiftly in Europe since the picture was filmed that its appeal now contains much more significance and patriotic stimulus than was perhaps originally expected. Interest will be chiefly focussed on those sequences which introduce the British naval heroes responsible for the victory over the Graf Spee, Captain Patrick Dove in a personal episode associated with the sinking of his ship, and the men of H.M.S. Cossack, along with those British prisoners of war whom they rescued from the ill-famed Altmark. The presentation of the battle of the River Plate is depicted in every detail, from the first sight of the Graf Spee to the scuttling of that doomed “pride of the German Navy.” Stirring commentary on this occasion is furnished by a distinguished British naval officer. REGENT THEATRE Seet against backgrounds in Russia before the World War in 1914-18, when the seeds oi the fearful revolution that was to follow were being sown, backgrounds of the Russo- I Austrian front, and backgrounds of Paris, “Balalaika” unfolds a tale of. | love between a prince and a daugb- ! ter of a revolutionary. Filmed in j the original operetta style which marked the play, “Balalaika” interprets its more dramatic and amusing sequences in terms of music as rendered by Nelson Eddy, Ilona Massey, and Walter Woolf King, j Eddy’s magnificent baritone voice is I well known, but Ilona Massey is a ] newcomer—an operatic singer, ! whose fame is no small thing in the musical world from which she has been taken by the film-makers of Hollywood. Among the supporting items are an “Our Gang” comedy, a coloured travelogue, and a fine selection of air-mailed newsreel scenes.