Round The Shows

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 340, 28 April 1928, Page 15

Round The Shows

TOLSTOY CLASSIC SCREENED

“RESURRECTION”

STRAND’S NEW FEATURE Doloa-es del Rio, by her magnificent portrayal o£ Katusha Maslova In the screen version of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection,” justifies the claim that she is the most important film find in recent years. In “Resurrection” Dolores del Rio has a role worthy of her art, and Tolstoy has an artist worthy of interpreting the difficult role of Katusha. Edwin Carewe’s production for Inspiration Pictures was screened last night before an appreciative audience at the Strand Theatre. “Resurrection’,' undoubtedly one of the pictures of the year, places Dolores del Rio in the front rank of the screen’s emotional actresses. Pictures of this class will do much to justify the Strand’s assertion that it is the natural Auckland home for classics of “the magic silver The versatility of the Mexican girl,

practically a newcomer in pictures, is amazing. First she portrayed an innocent, trusting

Katusha, a Katusha who “fell into sin” before she really knew what sin meant. KATUSHA THE MAGDALEN Then she was Katusha the Magdalen, who sat rocking, continually rocking her lifeless babe . . . Katusha, more sinned against than sinning, called

upon to amuse a bloated merchant on pleasure bent . . . The frail girl who defiantly shouted her innocence after his murder, at the close of a trial a travesty of justice so typically Russian, belonged to this period. So did the vodka-sodden Katusha in prison . . . The long, long tramp through Siberian wastes, followed by Dmitri, her lover- —and seducer. A penitent Dmitri, anxious to make reparation for the wrong he did the innocent peasant girl. But this phase is the last. . It pertains to a new Katuscha, purified, tried, true. “I am the resurrection and the life.” Though Rod la Rocque was all that a lover should (or should not) be ill the initial scenes, for there is lovemaking in “Resurrection” just as tense as that of any Romeo for his Juliet, the role of a matured, re-

formed and thoroughly repentent roue did not fall easily upon his immature shoulders. . . . HE RODE AWAY Rod la Rocque was more convincing as the light-hearted, carefree young cavalryman, who loved and laughed and—rode away. Count Ilya Tolstoy, the unknown son of a famous father, appeared in the film as a philosophic old cobbler, who, hammer in hand, recorded the pegs of experience as he tapped on th e sole of a shoe. How like the soul of man, he mused, was the sole of a shoe! Marc MacDermott, Australian-born, was the dissolute Major Schoenback, Prince Dmitri’s evil genius. Lucy Beaumont and Vera Lewis appropriately fitted in the background as his aunts. Clarissa Selwynne, the princeling’s mother, and Eve Southern were also in the cast. Eve Bentley deserves every praise for the masterly manner in which she directed her orchestra through the stirring “1812” overture of Tschkowsky, and the incidental music, admirably chosen, throughout the screening of “Resurrection.” A scenic of more than passing interest depicted a Fox expedition into the fastnesses of the South American jungle. An Aesop cartoon completed the bill.