AMUSEMENTS

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 226, 28 August 1939, Page 4

AMUSEMENTS

“SUEZ” That rare combination of romantic glamour and he-inan appeal so essential to the ideal screen hero are perpectly exemplified in the heroic figure of Ferdinand do Lesseps, played by Tyrone Power in 20th. CenturyFox “Suez,” which opens to-nigh.t at the Regent Theatre. In dramatizing on film the exploits of famous characters of history, there are few so generously endowed: with those qualities that grip tho imagination and stir the heart as Ferdinand do Lesseps. Most great lovers of history were notorious for their lack of lire and colour in the fields of advcntoure and daring, and likewise many of the doers of valorous deeds turned out to ha duds in the subtler arts of love and romance. Ferdinand do Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, on the contrary embodied all those attributes that make for inspired cinematic material. Be Lesseps was a hold adventurer,’ driven by the love, of two women—one ever at Ins side and grateful for anything he would give, one haunting him with the vision of love denied him—facing the raids of Bedouin tribesmen and the terror of the black simoon, to wrest a mighty waterway from the desert sands.

His was a personality and “Suez” a theme to conjure with in the lield of entertainment, and into it 20tli. Century-Fox poured all of its vast resources and Darryl F. Zanuck all of his great production skill. 1 Do Lesseps seems to have been the possessor of that sort of magic that could make the French housewife dig the last sou from her portemonnaic to invest it in anything do Lesseps advocated. It was the kind of magic that could sway a beautiful woman to enthusiasm for digging a ditch through a hundred miles of sand in a country she’s never seen:

History also reveals that in addition to being an extremely romantic figure do Lesseps was a man of action. He had served, his- country well and been honoured in the diplomatic service before he undertook the work that was to bring him his lasting fame. It was do Lesseps, who, on receiving word two days before the formal opening of his great .work that tire canal was blocked, ordered! the obstacle dynamited, knowing that a charge of dynamite could cause miles and miles of the shifting sand hanks of the canal to tumble into the cut. His words were to “Do get powder, powder in masses, and then if we cannot blow up the reck, we will blow ourselves up!” , .To fill' such a romantic, not to say heroic role, 20th. Century-Fox selected Tyrone Power. The two beautiful women who exert such a powerful influence on his life are played by Loretta Young and Annabella.