Everybody's Pictures.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 3 October 1918, Page 3

Everybody's Pictures.

Victor Hugo's great tragic romance "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," lias now been made into a picture-play under the title of "The Darling of Paris", from iv hi ell 1 it will be deduced that the story centres round the career of the courageous gipsy girl Esmeralda whom the master novelist direw with such a powerful hand. The part is talken by Theda Bara and there are few moments when she Hs not in the picture. Her charming personality is so forceful that her appearance is a real dramatic event that attracts attention from all picture patroni?. The story is a familiar one. ■Esmeralda, the young and beautiful gipsy girl, is kidnapped and brought up as a crimlinal in Paris ; but later is res. cued by iher mother. One of the city's mosit powerful men sees her and ia fascinated by her charm but she rejects) his advances. The- scientist admires her for 'her physical charms and) he begins plotting her train. He murders lief sweetheart and contrives-(to throw her into pripon, but the bellrsnger of the Cathedral of.-Notre .Dame, where most of tih© action takes place, becomes the girl's protector and comes to the rescue. Esmeralda flees to the Cathedral towers and, is pursued by her persecutor. Here the hunchbacked bellranger battle* with the intruder and finally flings Mm hundreds of Beet to the street below. Esmenalda is charged! with the murder and confesses under torture. She is condemned to execution and is oil her way to the scaffold when the hunchback agarin rescue her and there an ending that is happier than the rather melancholy termination of t'h© original. The management report a crowded house for the Fairbanks featmre "Wild an d Woolly" last'night.