“HELEN OF TROY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 358, 19 May 1928, Page 14

“HELEN OF TROY”

Clj EYE K SAT 111 E

COMEDY AT MAJESTIC She did her “stuff” without a slip, Till Paris said: “Kid, you’re a pip!” Next day they launched a thousand ships To bring back Helen. No, this translation is not attributed to old Koiner. Mr. L. Stanley Sliuford, a 100 per cent, up to the mark, modern, everyday Yank, was the ‘•poet” who felt that he simply must do justice in verse to the charms of Helen of Troy, that mischievous matron, “divinely tall, divinely fair.” In “The Private Life of Helen of Troy,” Alexander Korda’s screen interpretation of John Erskine’s amm;i ns novel of a year or so back, for First National, we have one of the cleverest satires ever transferred to the cinema theatre. Majestic audiences laughed heartily last night in a “capacity house” to the age-old story of the lady of Troy and her Spartan lover, laughed so unrestrainedly that their laughter is likely to re-echo through the theatre all the week.

Distance lends enchantment to Helen, played by Maria Codra, a famous beauty of the screen, who is seen for the first time in an Americandirected picture. Yet she was by no means the 'emote historical figure that inky schoolboys have heartily cursed for embroiling Troy and Sparta in a war simply because she felt that variety was the spice of life, that Purls was

more attractive than poor Menelaus, her domesticated husband. Lewis Stone was almost unrecognisable as Menelaus, the king with all the attributes of the modern tired business man, a king, too, who was familiarly addressed as “boss” by the Trojan equivalents of the present day War Minister and First Lord of the Admiralty. The last thing that Menelaus wanted was a war with the Spartans. He much preferred to go fishing. When Helen eloped with the handsome Paris (Ricardo Cortez) he was really rather relieved. It was the merchant class—our Big Business—that insisted on the campaign. “Those enterprising Spartans,” they insisted, “are getting ahead of us in trade. We demand war! We see Menelaus at the theatre, a very unwilling Menelaus dragged out at night because of Helen’s desire to show herself in a new gown, seated on marble slabs just as uncomfortable as those which drew such a sympathetic reference from Aldous Huxley in regard to the ancient Greeks. After Helen’s flight, and the war that ensued, the Trojans found themselves getting rather the worst of it until they conceived the idea of the wooden horse, the trap into which poor silly Helen fell so easily. But that, of course, is now history, and all Helen's tears never washed out the stain. Here we have those mouldy old Trojans and Spartans speaking “American” 100 per cent, modern—and human— Yanks, just as much so in fact as the Mr. Shuford whose verse we quoted. “The Private Life of Helen of Troy” is undoubtedly one of the pictures of the year. To an audience of British stock it is intensely amusing. We even see the globe-trotting proclivities of our own Prince of Wales burlesqued in the wanderings of Paris, likewise dubbed *ILR.H.” Yet a little more judicious handling of titles, and shortening somewhat, would do the picture no harm. The duet of Rex Wills and Len Jury in “Sizilietta,” the musical interlude, the orchestration for which Mr. J. Whiteford Waugh (the Majestic’s conductor) was responsible, was much appreciated. Mr. Waugh must also be complimented for the appropriate score for “Helen,” a clever arrangement which did much to emphasise the satire of the feature. The Midget Mosselles danced their way merrily through a miniature revue, six talented children, admirably trained and charmingly frocked. Max Davidson, the Hebrew comedian, gambolled in a Hal Roach comedy, and “Sea Breezes” revealed secrets of nature undreamed of by the man in the street. As usual the Majestic Review and pictorial fashion journal were right up to the moment. Altogether an enjoyable evening's entertainment.