ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 244, 12 September 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

REGENT THEATRE. “THE LIGHT THAT FAILED.” It has fallen to the lot of the one man in Hollywood who can do it to portray the role of tho romantic English man of action in one of tho most -adventurous of ' pictures by one of the world's greatest writers of tho period when the British Empire was in its golden age. That is to say, Ronald Colman stars in Rudyard Kipling’s great action romance. “The Light that Failed,” showing to-day at the Regent Theatre. It’s not because lie’s English himself —Hollywood has many English actors—that Colman is the ideal man to play the role of Dick Heldar, artist and soldier-of-fortune. It is, rathci, because he lias demonstrated in some nl the best pictures of the type that ho is the man for it. Ono has but to run over the list of Colman successes for conviction. There are “The Dark Angel," “Beau Geste,” “Clive of India,” “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “The Masquerader,” and many others in which he was the English man of action, not forgetting, ot course, others in which he was the sol-dier-of-fortune. such as “Under Two Flags,” “Bulldog Drummond” and “If J Were King.” The reason for this scries ol choice nominations, perhaps, is that Colman in real life is the English man of action. Born in Richmond, County of Surrey, England, the fifth of six children, he prepared himself for a commercial career until the outbreak of the war in 1914. Hu immediately joined up with the famous London Scottish, the regiment which won from the enemy the title “Ladies from Hell,” before the war ■ was very many months old. STATE THEATRE. ‘THE RAINS CAME.” “The Rains Came,” the great Louis 1 Bromlield novel, screens to-day at the I Slato Theatre with Myrna Loy, Tyrone I Power and George Brent starred at the head of a dazzling east 1 Ail the fascinating characters of tho book come to vivid life on the screen and every role is perfectly cast and brilliantly played. Myrna Loy, looking more enchanting than ever, breaks with the “perfect wile” tradition to play the amorous Lady Ksketh and she is superb. Tyrone Power is. grand as the handsome, high-caste Hindu surgeon, ! Major Rama Safti, the first real lovo of Lady Esketh’s romance-strewn life; and George Brent gives a splendid account oi himself as tho world-weipry Tom Ransome. The colourful setting of Bromfield’s mythical city of Ranchipur, India, is realistically reproduced and the av.esoine calastropliies that highlight the novel —the earthquake, the flood, the lire and the plague —are all reproduced with breathtaking effect. Indeed, in the opinion of this reviewer, there has never been anything in film history to match the spectacle scenes in “The Rains Caine.” ’liic mail train is thundering through file night, and most of tho passengers are asleep when suddenly there is a grinding of brakes —the communication cord lias been pulled. Tho guard of the train has-, tens along the corridors to find the cause; ho comes to a first-class compartment. On the floor is a beautiful young girl lying unconscious and the door open, 'i he unravelling of tho motive behind this mysterious occurrence forms tho enthralling plot of "Tho Spider,” the G-B-D action drama coming to tho State Theatre.