MAJESTIC THEATRE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20106, 28 November 1939, Page 5

MAJESTIC THEATRE

MAUREEN O’SULLIVAN IN “LET US IJVE,” AND “START CHEERING.” Heading an outstanding programme to-day is one of the year’s outstanding dramatic sensations, “Let Us L,ve, which tells how an innocent taxidriver and his friend are sentenced to death for murder. Circumstantial evidence proves to the complete satisfaction of the authorities that the arrested men are the guilty parties. Much of the film deals with the efforts of the taxi-driver’s fiancee to prove his innocence. It is in the presentation of this story that the producers have done so much; for seldom, ii ever has a film with such an ordinary basis for its narrative been so powerful. The photography helps to develop an atmosphere of suspense that is at limes almost unbearable, while the acting of Maureen O’Sullivan, as the fiancee, is surprisingly realistic. She makes her role alive with the terror with which she sees seemingly conclusive evidence being relentlessly piled up against her sweetheart. The film is a biting attack on a system of prosecution which depends so much on purely circumstantial evidence. Biting indeed is the irony in the last lines of the film, where the prosecutor says that, 1 having now released the innocent, it will fake him all his time to convict the guilty'."''From the opening scene, the director —and the photographer have made every sequence a dramatic step forward in a completely enthralling narrative, and one which has ail the elements of great 1 tragedy—pity and terror; The presentation of the more dramatic incidents has gripping realism. There is not one touch qf sentimentality, insincerity, or mere slickness in the script. Henry Fonda is excellently cast as the taxi-driver. The associate feature is a rollicking comedy with music, ’.’Start Cheering,’ starring .Walter Connolly, Joan Perry, Charles Starrett and a host of comedians.