“SADIE THOMPSON”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 400, 14 July 1928, Page 15

“SADIE THOMPSON”

SOMERSET MAUGHAM’S “RAIN”

TRAGEDY AT MAJESTIC As is sometimes the ease acting honours in “Sadie Thompson,” the screen version of the much-discussed “Rain** of Somerset Maugham, fell not to the star, but to her principal support. Lionel Barrymore gave a notable portrayal, at the initial screening of the South Sea Islands tragedy—for tragedy it is even - if at times Gloria Swanson, the Pacific Magdalen, would have us believe it a comedy at the Majestic Theatre last evening. Masterful, domineering, fanatical the missionary of Lionel Barrymore lived. And then the fall of the man of religion, so determined that the unfortunate woman to San Francsico. . . . An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth! That was the substance of which was made the sod of missionary Hamilton. Yet the feet of the man of God himself were nothing if not of clay. “Sadie Thompson,” or “Rain,” as it is better known to the British public, is sufficiently elemental to abolish any suggestion of, or necessity for, overemphasis. Here are these people, at the behest of an unkind fate, cast together at the American Pacific port of Pago Pago—the missionary and his wife, a doctor and his lady, and last but pot least Sadie Thompson, more sinned against than sinning, but a typical San Francisco Magdalen. Rain. Rain. Down tumbled the rain, as only it can in the tropics, maddeningly, until the brains of all were more or less benumbed. . . . The keynote of the rain is ever emphasised. The missionary, fanatical and domineering, determined that this woman “possessed of devils” (who had already made herself at home with the marines on the island, to the accompaniment of a raucous-voiced gramophone) should be deported. The climax comes when the missionary, endeavouring to save Sadie’s soul, falls a victim to her charms. Next morning he is found, with his throat cut, on the very beach upon which lie had forbidden the natives to dance. Though Gloria Swanson’s Sadie is a gum-chewing, wild-eyed young woman, sufficiently “devil-may-care” and brazen enough in the eyes of the missionary and his wife, she is not Somerset Maugham’s realisation of Sadie. Never once did she make herself really sufficiently unattractive. Apparently she forgot, like the major-

ity of legitimate actresses who have essayed the role, the laced-up and the fat legs that the author gave Sadie. Gloria’s ankles were the personification of neatness throughout Connie and Mildred Harris provide a whirlwind interlude in which Gabrielesque trumpets, concertinas, harps, trombones, and all the musical menagerie participate. The Majestic News sheets have more than usual to recommend them tli is week. In addition to intimate glimpses of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, it is possible to tour “the lakes and fells” of the one and only Killarney, and also watch the snooker champion, Joe Davis, at play. Eve has some particularly fetching ensembles for members of her own sex, Hal Roach romps through a genuinenly amusing comedy. Mr. J. Whitford Waugh and his orchestra provide an excellent musical programme.