AMUSEMENTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20030, 31 August 1939, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS

KING’S THEATRE

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS”: FAMOUS BRONTE NOVEL TO-MORROW

Samuel Goldwyn. clean of the more artistic df Hollywood’s film 'producers, in translating Emily Bronte's famous novel, ‘'Wutherk'.g Heights,” to the screen, has produced his greatest triumph. The picture has been acclaimed one of the most outstanding pictures so far of 1939 because of its compelling artistry, its beauty and dramatic power. It commences its season at the King’s Theatre tomorrow afternoon. Emily Bronte, the lonely spinster who wrote “Wuthering Heights.” died 91 years ago at the age of 30 years without ever knowing that her book would become one of Ihe imperishable treasures of English literature, and that she had given to the world a haunting, tragic love story that would thrill generations whose grandmothers were then unborn. It has bee I .], said that no woman living to-day anywhere in the world is capable of writing a book equal in power and splendour of imagination to the novel written by this lonely girl in 1847. Now as a motion picture it has become one of the outstanding ‘"hits" in motion picture history. Goldwyn gave the role of Cathy, the heroine of the story, to Merle Oberon. He chose Laurence Olivier for the role of Heathcliff, and gave important roles to Flora Rolbson, David Niven, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Hugh Williams, all of them English players of distinction. The story was adapted by Ben Hecll and Charles MacArthur, who have retained all cl the strange, haunting quality of the original. It is concerned with thwarted love and terrible vengeance: the tortured love affair between Cathy and Heathcliff, the stablehand; her escape by marriage to Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff’s savage retaliation. The strange three-cornered love story is told with dramatic impact, sweeping romance and in terms of stark human emotions, mysteriously influenced by the desolate Yorkshire moors.

REGENT THEATRE LAST DAY: “SOCIETY LAWYER.” “Society Lawyer,” featuring Walter Pidgeon and Virginia Bruce, will conclude a successful season at the Regent Theatre this evening. —To-morrow: Claudette Colbert and Don Amcehe in “Midnight”—

"Midnight,” which has Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, Francis Lederer, and John Barrymore at the head of its .cast, is a sprightly comedy and its season at the Regent Theatre may be anticipated with interest. This modern Cinderalla story about a girl who is taken out of the rain by a taxi-man ahd pitchforked into the midst, of wealthy society in the effort to escape him, who finds herself engaged on a strange task of creating a triangle to order, has the authentic note of comedy which was present in such films as "The Milky Way” and “She Met Him in Paris,” and if, turns unexpected corners and reveals new angles at every development. Once again the film is played out before a Parisian background, with a Hungarian baron, real and imaginary, a champagne millionaire, a pawn ticket from Monte Carlo, an American chorus, and the whole of the taxidrivers of Paris as important items in the plot. The weather helps, too, for it was the weather which drove Eve Peabody, alone and baggageless in Paris after a Monte Carlo disaster, to make a deal with a taxi-driver, Czerny, to take her around the night clubs in the effort to get a job, and it was ithe weather (plentiful rain) which allowed her to gate-crash a party when Czerny threatened to) complicate her life too greatly. Theie are any number of good scenes: the moments at .the party when Eve thinks she lias been discovered, the moment when the fairy coach, ordered by fairy-godfather John Barrymore, brings her a wardrobe, the time when the Parisian, taxidrivers force the hotel to reveal her address, the time when __ Baron Czerny saves the “Baroness liom embarrassment, the telephone conversation with the imaginary child with the measles, the court trial for divorce with its unexpected ending. “Every Cinderella has her midnight, says Eve when things begin to go too well for her and when she sees ready that “tub of butter” which, as a poor working girl, she has ajways wanted and of which she has always been cheated bv “some snub-nosed kid in the orchestra playing the trap-drum.’ And it is when Cinderella’s midnight approaches that the film reaches its funniest. The movie shows Claudette Colbert in her best vein, it brings Don Ameche one of his likeable parts, though perhaps not very reminiscent of the Hungarian, Francis Lederer an opportunity to play the part o.t a young man about town to whom life is one romance after another, John Barrymore, that quizzical, desensitised role he knows so well. Altogether “Midnight” is cue cf those movies which make one glad to have left home to see them, even in August.