Coming Season in Movieland to Be a Lively One

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 July 1927, Page 23

Coming Season in Movieland to Be a Lively One

Big Output Suggested NEW FEATURES OUTLINED | FEW thousand Americans | were privileged recently to see a few of the special | pictures to be part of the Paramount-Famous Lasky j Corporation’s output. The lists of new pictures promise advancement in the art of the cinema, greater entertainment for the public and a terrific battle for supremacy among the more important companies.

pROMINENT features for next seasons programme were shown. Among them were Emil Janning’s first American-made picture, “The Way of

All Flesh”; Pola Negri’s new picture, said to be her best; ' “Barbed Wire”; the German film showing a mechanical world In the next centary, “Metropolis,” and “Chang,” a marvellous picture

°* the Siamese jungle made by the men who were the creators of “Grass.” They have given “Chang” a human note that was not present in the earlier picture, says a correspondent, w hile its study of the natural history men and animals is quite as full and interesting. FIGHT IN JUNGLE The fortunes of a young inhabitant of the jungle and his family are followed breathlessly in this picture; their brave battle with the gigantic forces of nature; their domestication of the wild jungle creatures; their dangers and their pleasures, which are simple enough. But the man, his wife and small children seem happy, even when they are flying through the tangled forest to seek help and safety in the village whence they had gone to set up their ow a household in the wilderness.

One gets closeups of tigers, leopards, elephants and other of the wild aninials of the jungle; sees them caught *h traps, hunted by squads of natives a od killed when they become too dangerous for safety. . The great punch of the picture lies m the herd of elephants, 50 or more huge creatures, that plough through the village sending its inhabitants to the trees to save their lives. A hunt organised, a kraal built, and the beaters drive the immense pachyderms into the chute and imprison them. The sight of the men, masking themBelves behind branches of trees, some-

thing the elephants cannot understand, recalls the latter portion of “Macbeth,” the prophecy of the deceiving witches. METRO-GOLDWYN’S OUTPUT Two hundred and forty-three productions ranging from super-features to one-reel novelties are listed on the production schedule laid before the international sales convention of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer organisation. The super-features in prospect include “The Glory Diggers,” an epic of the building of the Panama Canal. Lawrence Stallings, author of “The Big Parade,” wrote the new story, which is to be given a Jiuge production. In “Buttons,” a romance of the sea, in which Jackie Coogan will be starred, the United States merchant marine will be glorified. Among the production plans to be offered at the convention are details of a number of other important stories Lon Chaney, during the coming season, will appear in “Hate,” a drama by Frank L. Packard, and “Seven Seas,” by Gaston Leroux, author of the “Phantom of the Opera.” “The Cossacks,” adapted from the Tolstoi drama, will be John Gilbert’s vehicle. Rex Ingram, director of “Mare Nostrum,” is completing “Gar den of Allah,” in the Sahara desert with Alice Terry in the principal role.

Lon Chaney, “the man of a thousand faces,” at last reveals the features that have never been seen except under some grotesque, baffling disguise, in his portrayal of a grizzled sergeant of marines in “Tell It To The Marines,” his latest picture. William Haines. Eleanor Boardman, and Carmel Myers are also in this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production.