STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 276, 11 February 1928, Page 15

STRAND

“SEVENTH HEAVEN” Beginning yesterday, the second week of its season at the Strand Theatre, the Fox film version of the wellknown play, “Seventh Heaven” attracted large and appreciative audiences. No matter how long the management care to run this picture it will attract people, for it has all the qualities necessary to enshrine it in the public’s heart. Highbrows and cynics may deplore its sentimentalism, but mercifully enough the world is not designed to meet always the approval of such. Some of the greatest literary minds of the world have inclined at times to sentimentalism, and people have been made happier by no other means than this. There is sentiment in all of us, and as men and women it behoves us to be courageous enough to recognise and admit it. “Seventh Heaven” was one of the prize-winning pictures in America last year, and the fact that it'was sorted out for honour from among the vast number of films made in a year is really tribute enough, but after seeing it, one comes to the conclusion that the laurel was deserved. The love story of the poor little grisette and her big, protective sewer man, is much more romantic that the miserable surroundings in which they lived. Chico worked underground, but he had a soaring, indomitable spirit, and his quaint assertion that he was a ’‘remarkable fellow” was no morel than the truth. With soul aspiring he had

found content, the great illusive key to worldly happiness. Thoroughly satisfied with his spiritual equipment he longed only for modest material advancement to make himself completely happy. Diane, wistful, spiritless waif, had none of his grand attributes, but she was pure of heart and understanding. Women need n 0 more than this to be beautifully heroic. Chico and Diane entered fortuitously into a mat-ter-of-fact relationship which had opened into the flower of love at the time when the Great War plunged Europe into chaos. The day of wedding was the day of mobilisation, and Chico and his honest neighbour, Gobin, went out together as soldiers of France. Then followed the great epic defence of Paris when the army left the capital in taxis to stem the Teuton advance over the Marne. This heroic episode, splendidly depicted, was one of the purple patches. In the dreary years that followed, little Diane, steeled and heroic, waited for the return of her lover, and for the wedding. Temptation came her way, but turning it from her. she came to her idyll in the end. Charles Farrell gave a brilliant characterisation of the volatile Chico, who combined in single make-up, an assortment of marvellously fine qualities. There was certainty and art in iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllll

his study. Janet Gaynor made an exquisite heroine and the changing moods of the character were caught with the subtlety of an artist. Miss Phyllis Hazel and Mr. Birrell O’Malley were soloists in an excellent musical prologue, which included “Barcarolle.” The orchestra, under Miss Eve Bentley, played appropriate incidental music.