“WHAT PRICE GLORY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 58, 31 May 1927, Page 15

“WHAT PRICE GLORY”

A WAR COMEDY The film critic of the “Chicago Daily Tribune” writes: “I might as well say it all at once, ‘What Price Glory’ seems to me to be the best war comedy ever filmed. ‘What Price Glory’ isn’t a pretty picture. Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt are the toughest, hardest fighting soldiers who ever made life a business of war and women. Sworn enemies they are, because through their joint careers Quirt had the annoying habit of stealing Flagg’s girl. Not one girl, but a series of them. all the way from Shanghai Mabel to Charmaine, the fascinating French barmaid. Fox should be proud of Victor McLaglen as the captain who loves his men, though he curses them; who drives them fiendishly through shell-fire, and then returns to hold a dying boy in his arms. Edmund Lowe is equally convincing as the handsome top sergeant, and Dolores Del Rio as a vivid, amorous Charmaine, is a bright spot throughout the picture. For that matter all the parts are perfectly cast. Probably the easiest way to explain the story is to say that it gives you the whole war condensed into eight reels. It is done so well that you forget you’re watching a movie. Subtitles are few and far between, I noticed, and they’re not needed, for the picture talks for itself. Flagg’s pantomime is so thorough that as he hurls invective at his men the audience leans forward to read his lips and then roars at his words as though they had been spoken. It is also one of the funniest pictures ever filmed, and Raoul Walsh did a tricky bit of directing by injecting heart-wringing bits of tragedy into reels that are otherwise screamingly funny.”