MARY PICKFORD

Hokitika Guardian, 11 October 1929, Page 8

MARY PICKFORD

HER DEBUT IN TALKIES. EMOTIONAL ACTING. A VOICE TO PLEASE ADMIRERS. The reign of many stars of-the silent film has been ended by the talkies, but not Mary Pickford’s. The revolution, it has been made clear, has not weakened her position, but strengthened it. Her legions of adoring admirers may now hear her voice, and, it being a soft, caressing American voice, they may feel that she is closer to them than ever. More significant still is the fact that Miss Pickford has taken the courageous step of “ growing up.” Thereby she risked losing the fealty of multitudes who have liked to think of her in terms of “ the world’s sweetheart” type, which she has long personified, but she has vastly widened her scope. Her successes in the role of “sweet seventeen” have been easy; she works harder now, but her achievement is more worth while.

“ Coquette,” in which at the Strand last night, Auckland first saw the new Mal-y Pickford, to some extent belies its title. Many expected something light and frothy, and in the first,, act they are not disappointed, but the play becomes heavily emotional, and the surprise of the beholder is forgotten in his interest in seeing Mary Pickford in a tragic role. Tragedy arrives when Michael, a very serious young man, joins the half dozen or so of the adoring followers of Norma, who is the life and soul of the fashionable “ country club set ” in a Southern State community. She has no mother, but her father loves her deeply, also blindly—so blindly that he is unable to recognise that his daughter has not merely entered upon another flirtation, but has fallen head over heels in love. Like other fathers of this familiar type, he also over-estimates his authority over his own daughter. The time comes, and with startling suddenness, when he pits his authority against the devotion of the serious young man, and after a violent quarrel, melodramatically orders him from the house. It is a familiar story, but at this point, it divergqs from the type m a manner'that those thousands who will see the picture must be left to learn for theihselves. Mention must be made of a murder trial, not a murder trial as a British community knows it, but an American one, which is something vastly different, inasmuch as the presiding judge is the one person in the Court whom nobody else bothers about'. But Norma, on the witness-stand, torn by devotion to her father and love for her fiance, and knowing full Veil the impossibility &f harmonising their interests, provides a spectacle which will not disappoint her most abject devotees. She is, of course, the central figure in the story, but the acting of the others is adequate, particularly that of Michael, ill the role of the lover. He is a handsome lad, and, unlike many film heroes, thoroughly masculine. Then there are a “black mammy,” to whom the girl tells her trouble, a “ kid brother,” who thinks himself a man, and Norma’s “steady” lover, who comforts her occasionally and does her odd jobs. The scene is laid pleasantly in an “ old Southern mansion,” where life is leisurely and dignified; and also at the Courthouse, where the murder trial is held.

Mary Pickford will have- more rivals m the talkies than she had of old, but “Coquette” is strong proof that she will more than hold her own. It will be a different Mary Pickford, necessarily, but if she loses some old friends she will make many new ones.

George Robey himself, dressed as / bride and philosophising on marriage, makes an outstanding minor film, in addition to which there are a Ufa film, “ Ancient Art,” two numbers by the Flenzaley string quartet, the saxophone playing of Ruth Glanville, and the Fox ftfovietone News, which includes the deeply-impressive funeral of Marshal Foch.,