NATIONAL AND LYRIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 20, 14 April 1927, Page 14

NATIONAL AND LYRIC

GREAT CIRCUS PICTURE “ Bigger Than Barnum's ” has the three ingredients of a tine show —a rattling good story, a splendid cast, and corking direction. Ralph Ince, indeed, doubling in brass as director and villain with nothing up either sleeve, has turned out a picture with punch, and a surging flow of melodrama broken at just the right times by comedy touches. Viola Dana is her usual charming and capable self as the little high-wire walker. Ralph Lewis invests the role of her partner, getting too old for the dangerous work on the high wire, with that realism and sincerity which is his forte. George O’Hara is a fine hero, and Mr. Ince REMEMBER! GOOD FRIDAY Marie. Corelli’s Greatest Novel “THELMA” at the RIALTO

Newmarket on GOOD FRIDAY at 2.30 and 7.SS p.m.

lends a delightful touch of comedy to the heavy part of Ravelle, the loudtalking slack wire acrobat who wears his heart on his sleeve little knowing that it isn’t much of a decoration at best The business of making the villain human, too. is a particularly excellent touch not often found in melodramatic circles. | Arthur Guy Bmpey, who wrote the . story, is to be congratulated on the , material and the originality of his subject matter, while J. Grubb Alexander has done a brilliant job in translating the story to the screen. The fire scenes toward which the drama climbs in a steady, breath-taking sweep, are sensational in the extreme, with the situation on the wire-stretched to the burning hotel one of the most thrilling seen in many a pale moon.