MAJESTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 167, 8 March 1932, Page 2

MAJESTIC

TO-DAY AND TO-NIGHT. Life on tbe "inside" in a great overcrowded penitentiary is echoed, in thrills, sensations, grim episodes, comedy and heart throbs, in "The Big House," Metro-Goldwyn-May-er's much heralded drama of penitentiary life, which opened at the Majestic Theatre last night. Stark realism, an'd men in the raw, are contrasted with home life and a love romance in the vivid story. There is a great prison riot, with a thousand men quelled by machine guns and army tanks; there is a patbetie story of the friendship of two convicts, and the regeneration of one by love, and the startling speetacle of a boy first offender thrown into the company of hardened criminals until he becomes worse even tlian they. Chester Morris, Wallace Beery and Robert Montgomery play tbe central male roles as three cell mates about whom the riot, bate, and ferment revolves. Beery enacts a gangster, vicious, yet with a sardonic humour about his characterisation ; Morris is seen as a. forger and erook who eventually finds re *ene^ation in the turmoil, and Montgorae y Jc os a splendid characterisation as tlie boy, showing the corrosion of a human soul. Leila Hyams plays the heroine, and is clever as well as beautiful, gaining sympathy" from the andience without over-sentimentality. Claire MeDowell and J. C. Nugent play "home folks" as her parents. Lewis Stone is a compelling figure as the prison warden and De Witt Jennings plays the gruff yard captain, in vivid eontrast to George Marion, seen as "Pop," the tender-hearted prison guard. Karl Dane heads a group of comedians who furnish comedy relief in the picture.