ACTION AND DRAMA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32300, 16 August 1943, Page 5

ACTION AND DRAMA

“ THE BIG BLOCKADE ” PROGRAMME AT REGENT A FILM EVERYONE SHOULD SEE Quislings were on parade in London recently. . This unexpected event was simply for a film scene, however. Michael Balcon was producing “The Big Blockade,” new film about the economic war which comes to the Regent Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a fantasy sequence, showing a Quisling Convention. Choosing satire as a weapon, associate producer Cavalcanti — famed Brazilian-born documentary ace —filmed this scene with shrewd thrusts of humour. He had all the Quislings there, taking a bro W-beating from Gestapo chief in charge of Quislings, played by character actor .Robert Morley. He had actors portraying gaunt-faced, worried Major Quisling, thinning-haired Ad-, miral Darlan, and delegates from Belgium, Holland, Czecho-slovakia and other Nazi-occupied countries. Quisling was taking a knock because the Norwegian fish quota was down, and because so many Norwegians were escaping to England. The Belgian Quisling was trying in vain to explain away the “sabotage” in his country. The Dutch Quisling was trying to do very much the same thing. And there was one particular spot of bother. The Reichsminister was in his, most sarcastic mood. His highpitched voice was scornful and biting. His victim was the dark-eyed, excitable Italian delegate. • The Italian was gesticulating angrily; the other delegates were tittering. ■ /

" It would have been a great deal better if you Italians had refrained from entering the war,” the Reichsminister was exclaiming. “At least,’’ he added, “on our side.” He had other things to say about Mussolini and his tottering empire, too. Very uncomplimentary things. And then his high-pitched laugh rang out as the impotently raging Italian stalked out of the hall, leaving the other Quislings to bear the brunt of the remainder of the Nazi’s tirade against Hitler’s victims. The life of a Quisling, in fact, is not a happy one. This scene in “The Big Blockade,” may be in the nature of a satirical fantasy. But there is more than a grain of truth in it! finally to-night ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT MISSING “One-Of Our Aircraft Is Missing,” will show finally to-night at the Regent Theatre.