SMALL TOWN FUN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 566, 19 January 1929, Page 15

SMALL TOWN FUN

SYD. CHAPLIN IN FORM SPECTACULAR WAR FILM Chaplin is a magic name on any moving-picture programme; it is a guarantee of the brightest and cleverest fun. That is why people will leave the coolness of the beaches this week and go to the Majestic Theatre. Syd. Chaplin is at the top of his form in a bright tale of small-town life entitled “The Fortune Hunter.” No more direct contrast to the jollity of the Chaplin film could be conceived than the spectacular film of war, “The Somme.” Each of these big attractions balances the other and gives the programme the Qualities of breadth and weight. To round off the entertainment, the Majestic management has also provided an attractive stage presentation, “Adam and Eve,” several smaller films and the usual splendid programme of music, played by the Majestic Orchestra, under the conductorship of Mr. Whiteford Waugh. Based upon the play by Winchell Smith, prince of the authors of farce, "The Fortune Hunter” is the most sensationally joyous picture seen here for months. Syd. Chaplin appears as the wife-hunter with dishonourable intentions who goes to the village with the intention of making his fortune. There he meets the lovely shallow-pate daughter of the town’s wealthiest man, Josie Lockwood, a part played exquisitely by Helene Costello. Against the background of the townspeople, all amazingly realistic types, the hero-villain lays his schemes and the spectator becomes hysterical with sustained laughter. Better than "The Man On The Box,” funnier than “Charley’s Aunt,” this latest Chaplin extravaganza is a riot of merriment from the first foot to the final flicker. The turning-out of the local fire brigade and the village ball, are things of pure delight. Chaplin takes the local drug store in hand and modern methods carry the rustics before them.

In pure ideal-shattering realism, “The Somme” is greater than any war film which has preceded it. It is the truth about modern fighting laid bare and revolting. A New Era film, produced by permission of the Army Council, it takes its place in the series of Great War pictures "Mons” and “Zeebiaigge.”

There is 'no sentimental story to fit into the scenes of shell-wrecked land; the film is pictured history. Through Delville Wood, and the shattered villages of Combles, Montauban, Contalmaison, Chateau Thieriy.

scenes remembered by many -of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces, the picture takes the spectator, and the horror of war and the splendour of sacrifice tug at his heart-strings. The three general attacks which, after tremendous battles cleared the Germans out of a 90-mile sector, are pictured and included in the film are reproductions of individual deeds of valour which gained the Victoria Cross. • Adam and Eve” is an amusing and well-staged trifle served up by Mr. Yorke Gray, who needs no introduction to Auckland theatregoers. Tts dressing strikes one as eminently sensible in this and its humour is not unbearably tepid. The Majestic News is a tour of the globe and a pictorial account of interesting happenings.