BLOSSOM TIME

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 88, 8 January 1935, Page 14

BLOSSOM TIME

(By John Storm)

John Drinkwater ns writer, and Paul Stein as director, in conjunction with one of the greatest and certainly the most popular of living tenors, have made of the picture “Blossom Time” such a complete dramatic and musical success that it stands in a class alone. The name “Blossom Time” aptly expresses the feeling of the picture. Quaint touches of comedy sparkle through it, and in it there is all the exquisite promise of the old earth’s spring time, together with the same old earth’s most tender grief. And there is in it, too, a strangely wrought feeling of the drying of earth’s tears, and of a Heaven that follows after. And all this is in the midst of fine period drama with every detail correct, the shady gardens, the spacious ballrooms, the handsome dragoons and the inconsequent students of old Vienna. As the picture moves forward, the flowing action compels admiration as much as the fragrant offering of youth and romance touches the heart. Though this is Richard Tauber’s first British picture, lie is not unknown in New Zealand. He has appeared on the screen before in a continental translation. Looking back on this earlier picture, I feel that his performance in “Blossom Time” is immeasurably finer. Many things go to make it so; first he appears with a star supporting cast, many of whom arg well-known continental players. Then the famous tenor is interpreting John Drinkwater, as well as Schubert. There is no sense of the story having been written round the music, still less of the songs having been pitchforked into the story. Of the supporting cast, Paul Graetz, as the dancing master, father of Vicki, gives one of his finished vignettes. He is at once impish, wily and worldly wise, and none of these things too much.

Then Athene Seyler as the strong archduchess, with a sad, sweet past, makes her small part so impressive that tvhen she hands her long lost lover a “hankie” at the wedding, we feel like to whisper “thank you” and dry our eyes on it ourselves. As for Vicki, from the moment we see little Jane Baxter awakened from sleep to play for the dancing lesson of the handsome dragoon, till that when we see her in all the pomp and circumstance of a military wedding, walk up the aisle to be his bride, we follow her with our eyes, our best intelligence, and all our hearts.