AMUSEMENTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 May 1929, Page 6

AMUSEMENTS.

EVERYBODYS PICTURES. “.MOTHER MACHREE” TO-NIGHT. Even ns the song Ims sung its way into the hearts ol' every race, so will the. picture capture the heart of the world. Earth’s greatest miracle- —• Mother Love—at last portrayed in all its flaming beauty—with Irish wit to ease the sympathetic tears. For over a score of years, no has been able 10 hold the imaginations and the hearts of the American people like “Mother Maehree.” Probably no tenor has ever lx*en able to give a recital without having it called for by his audience if he did not include it in his programme. The sheer beauty of its compelling lyrics even haunted their author, Rida Johnson Young, until she was forced to write the story of “Mother Maehree.” And now Fox Films has transla.ed this great epic of Irish mother love and sacrifice to the screen and it is showing at the Princess Theatre to-night. "With John Ford, maker of “The iron Horse” and “Three Bad Men’’ as its director, and Belle Bennett in the title role, Fox Films has produced a memorable picture poignant with drama, whimsical with humor and throbbing with life. The story tells of an Irish mother, bin it. might be any mother, who leaves her home in Ireland with her young orphan son Brian, played Gy the beautiful child Philippe de Lacey, and coming to America tries to educate him. She fails- to make a living for both of them, even with the kindly help of the Kilkenny Giant, played by Victor McLagien the Captain Flagg of “What. Price Glory.” Desperate, and thinking only of her son’s welfare she allows him to bo adopted by an aristocratic woman, Eulalia Jensen, so that he may receive the education she is unable to give him. The child is brought up by his foster mother in the belief that his molher is dead. I lirough the years Mother Maehree watches her son growing to manhood, achieving all she hoped Ipr him find fufilling all her dreams, while she' is a servant in the home of the girl with whom her son is in love. Brian, as a young man, is played by Neil Hamilton, and some of the first sequences are where the mother and son meet each other, the one hiding her identity the other wondering why he should be so stirred every time he sees the little old woman. There is much to commend this beautiful picture. Superlative acting, fine directions, scenes filmed in Ireland, and a story vital with life. The cast includes such favorites of the screen, in addition to those already meivianed, as Ethel Clayton, Constance Howard, Ted McNamara in the fine part of the Harper of Wexford, Pat Somerset and others. This is a picture you must see.

Special selections by the orchestra Prices to-night: Circle 2s, stalls Is 6d Children under 12 as usual.