NATIONAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 216, 1 December 1927, Page 16

NATIONAL

“THE THIRD DEGREE” Commencing to-day, the principal feature at the National Theatre star Dolores Costello in the new picturisation of “The Third Degree.” Some years ago “The Third Degree” as a stage play caused a profound sensation throughout the English-speaking world. Now the screen version is causing just as much attention. Ruthless as the methods employed by the police were to compel confessions from innocent persons, so is this picture in exposing the tortures the victims had to undergo. More than anjithing, it shows that circumstantial evidence is not to be relied upon. The story, briefly, is as follows: Annie Daly (played by Dolores Costello) is the daughter of a circus daredevil and bareback rider. Several fine circus scenes are shown in the prologue, which deals largely with the sawdust ring. The story proper opens with the love affair of Annie and the son of a millionaire. They are informally married, and instead of a warm welcome at the millionaire’s home, are turned out of doors. In its inexplicable way. Fate makes a boomerang of the father’s efforts to break the lovers’ idyll, and weaves for their lives a web of intricate and engrossing pattern. The embers of long-dead events burst into flame again, and mount into a flame which licks the very heights of dramatic situation. Young romance, mysterious murder, the care-free joys of the circus tent, blackmail, and the

“grilling” of “the third degree,” figure prominently in the production. A specially selected supporting programme will accompany “The Third Degree,” including a full feature length comedy starring Reed Howes, “The Self-starter.”