MAJESTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 173, 15 March 1932, Page 2

MAJESTIC

TO-NIGHT When this picture is released women patrons in particular will keenly sense the undercurrent of trigic domesticity which percolates through this entire film. It presents the situation of a home-loving wife Vho has given her husband five, children in almost as many years — kiddies whose ages range from three to ten, and who, therefore, constitute a very definite menace to their father's literary ambition. Because of his children, then, he is an authof condemned to remain a clerk. Into the lives of Bart and Peggy Carter there riow comes the woman Mildred, who loved the author, Bart, years before. She is a woman of assured position in the very firm where Bart picks up a precarious Iivelihood, and her intuitive knowledge of his domestic tragedy inspires her to give him a haven — such haven being, of conrse, Jier luxurious flat — to which he may escape from his raueous-voiced progeny and turn out the work of which she knows him capable. Later, - when Peggy Carter discovers that thechildren, instead of being a bond between her and Bart, are actually dividing them, she is in despair. She tells Mildred that, come what may, the woman who has been into the Valley of the Sha.dows for a man to bear his children, must always win in the end. She decides to leave Bart, taking the children with her, and return to her old home in California. Bnt they are held up hy a storm, and are forced to return next morning. It is then that Peggy learns that the inevitable has happened, and that Bart has been unfaithful to her. That is the end of their happiness — Bart goes off to Paris with Mildred, and Peggy opens a millinery shop in order to snpport her brood without the aid of their father. Years later, Bart has become famous, but the thread of his romance with Mildred has worn thin. Returning to New York, he goes to see his family. With all the cruelty of youth, the young ones are prepared to desert the woman who has been both father and mother to them, and turn to the man whose stepping stones to success have been their mother's broken heart and another woman's caresses. The climax, however, is both effiective and touching, and proves the truth of Peggy's contention that, in a final showdown, the mother of a man's children must always he first in his heart. John Boles sui-passes himself in this picture. Genevieve Tobin is very effective as Mildred, the heautifully accoutred vamp. As for Lois Wilson, as Peggy, her performanee is moving to a degree, and is a most outstanding one. An element of humour is provided by a number of very cl-ever youngsters in the cast, and by Zasu Pitts, in one of her inimitable "maid" roles.