SURRENDER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 238, 28 May 1932, Page 2

SURRENDER

WARNER BAXTER IN ONE OF HIS BEST FILMS STORY OF PRISON CAMPS In "Surrendel-, '' which opens on Thursday at the Grand Theatre, Warner Baxter proves himself the superb actor. It is easily one of the most interesting films in his more than interesting Career. The romantic Mr. Baxter has always been one of this reviewer's secret screen weaknesses, and his performance of this difficult part, delightfully aided and abetted by Leila Hyams, as his Prussian sweetheart, will boost him many notehes in the estimation of picturegoers. C. Aubrey Smith makes an excellent contrast, as the fiery old general, Alexander Kirkland, a newcomer to the screen, scores heavily as Baxter's German rival who has learned both tolerance and fatalism in the grim school of war, while Ralph Bellanay as the stern commander of the prison camp gives a gripping performance that augurs well for his screen future. While the period of "Surrendel-" is that of 1917 and 1918 and the setting is a desolate prison camp on the icy shores of the Baltic, the war itself is merely an unseen and unhearcf, but tremendously important, baclcground for the unusual love between the principals. Out qf the bitterness of conflict, the despair of a girl who sees her fiance off to a front from which she instinctively knows he will never return, and the baffled hopes and repressed_ emotions of half-starved prisoners," Director William K. Howard has woven a brilliant, absorbing and intensely human drama, and one that preserves to a notable degree the power of Pierre Benoit' s "Axelle," on which it is based. _ Msr5b-ii- rt