NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 360, 22 May 1928, Page 15

NEW REGENT

“WAY OF ALL FLESH” In his first American-made picture, •‘The Way of All Flesh,’* now being shown at the New Regent Theatre, Emil Jannings gives a performance that is dramaticaly great. Emil Jannings outdoes himself in this fascinating and immensely clever character study of August Schilling, a bank cashier living a peaceful and ordered life in a small American town. When the bank orders its cashier to Chicago to sell some bonds, the tempo of the story hitherto moving slowly increases in speed and in dramatic intensity. Schilling comes under the spell of a dangerous young lady who completely demoralises him. A round of revelry follows, and then a visit to a boardinghouse. The next morning Schilling is shocked by the loss of his bonds. Ascertaining whert* the woman may be found, he visits the saloon. He tries pleading with her and then endeavours to intimidate her. Eventually a crook hits him with a chair and he is carried to the railway track outside the saloon. Here, another of the crooks decides to strip him of everything that will identify him, and just as he is taking his watch Schilling recovers and struggles with him. As he throws the crook off, a train dashes past, and Schilling is stunned by the fact that he has killed a man also. He decides to end his life, but sees the report in a paper, where he has been killed. The crook, mutilated, has been mistaken for him. He struggles through life, doing a little work wherever possible. In the passing years he becomes wrinkled, his hi»ir matted, and his steps halting Attracted by a sign outside a theatre, ho obtains a cheap seat to hear his son, now a famous violinist, give a recital. He is moved to tears when, for an encore, the son plays a piece which he tells the audience, his father taught him. A particularly strong cast plays in support of Jannings. Leslie V. Harvey plays Handel’s “Largo” and Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” on the organ, and the Regent Operatic Orchestra, under th.e baton of Arthur G. Frost, plays “Evolution of Dixie.”