“Mother Machree”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 23

“Mother Machree”

MOTHERHOOD PERSONIFIED Famous Song Comes to Screen SENTIMENT sublimated” lias been the description applied to “Mother Maeliree,” the Fox Film Corporation’s drama sooji to be screened in Auckland. Cynics and critics may say what they like about sentiment, but the human race will always appreciate it and feel bigger and better because of that susceptibility.

It is an intriguing question which our bathroom balladists have murdered more effectively, “La Dcnna e Mobile” or “Mother Machree.” Because of the tune or the sentimental doesn’t matter (says Augustine Carroll). The inescapable fact is that in each instance there has been murder, cruel and calculated. The bejewelled lady suggested in “Lo Donna e Mobile,” charming and can ricious; the woman personified ir. ‘Mother Machree,” steadfast in th sacrifices of motherhood, both tune been vocally done to death in the bath- j rooms. Bo it was that when the directors ■ of the Fox Film Corporation invited ' me to a private screening of “Mother I Machree,” founded on the song, I wondered whether, so to speak, this represented a belated wake; or whethei , there was to be a further crucifixion of sentiment. Anyhow, having heard ; John McCtfrmack sing the song in his I best brogue, touch with lyric pathos i the invocation, I did not want to have my dream disturbed.

Well, the Fox picture is a beautiful awakening for all so dreaming. Perhaps because there is in me so much of the Celt that I rose from my seat with a catch in the throat, and saw around so many Celts striving to disguise their emotion under the embarrassment of the lights. Here is sentiment not debased, as in those awful divorce films; sentiment sublimated. Not only the Irish will it sway, as revealed in “Mother Machree,” but the more prosaic people of 1 British stock. For this picture, sorj rowful with a leavening of humour, touches the heart-strings like an Irish minstrel might his harp. I Scenes and types are part of the lure of “Mother Machree,” and at this private screening, the organ playing , proved a splendid incidental. It compensated for the voices that had as- | sailed our ears in the past. I No, the story won't be told here That would snoil the anticipatory relish that this review has sought to i promote.