STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 105, 25 July 1927, Page 13

STRAND

TWO BIG PICTURES Large audiences are showing their appreciation of the two big pictures at the Strand this week. Both pictures are made from popular novels —novels that were so widely read that they were regarded as excellent screen material, and have lived up to their reputation. They are even more exciting when transferred to the screen, with all its possibilities of making more vivid a good story. Conrad Nagel, who is the favourite male actor of so many screen fans, is seen in his best film role in Josef Von Sternberg’s “The Exquisite Sinner,” the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, now being shown at the Strand Theatre. Nagel long ago won recognition as one of the most finished actors on the American screen. His early legitimate training is partly responsible for that, but Nagel is also known as one of the most sincere actors of the picture profession. Nagel is now under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to play exclusively in the productions of that organisation and he has a number of remarkable screen performances to his credit during the last year. His work as the vagabond in “The Exquisite Sinner” stamps him as one of the really romantic characters of the screen and will win him thousands of additional film followers, who joins a roving band of gypsies in an attempt to escape the conventions of society he does the best work of his career. In this picture he has, moreover, an excellent foil in Renee Adoree, whose work in “The Big Parade” and “La Boheme” have won her national acclaim. Other members of the cast include Paulette Duval, Frank Currier, George K. Arthur, Mathew Betz, Helena D’Algy and Claire Du Brey. Josef Von Sternberg directed the production with skill and finesse, and has packed it with action and with comic situations.