STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 571, 25 January 1929, Page 15

STRAND

“FOUR SONS’’ PREMIERE One of the really outstanding pictures of the year is “Four Sons,” which comes to the Strand Theatre this evening. Here is a picture about which it can be truthfully said that every moment is a big one—it is ‘that kind of story, the dramatic suspense never dropping for a second. The Bavarian Tyrolese scenes are colourful to the utmost degree.

The director. Ford, took a trip to Germany, spent several months there and brought back with him hundreds of photos and sketches to aid him in saturating the background with the quaintness and arresting colour of the locale itself.

A few of the* highlights are the beau tiful picture of home, mother sitting with her four sons at dinner table; the vastly moving repetition of the above scene in a latter sequence, in which mother sits alone with the spirits of her absent sons. The dances and merriment at Grandma Bernle’s birthday party. The scene in which Grandma Bernle is notified of her youngest son’s death after the armistice, as she is laying out his “civics” in expectation of his return. The scenes in which the brother in the Amarican Army hears the cry of “mother” from a wounded soldier and discovers his youngest brother dying from wounds. The scene showing Grandmother Bernle learning her letters among little children in the school-room in preparation for her trip to America, and he subsequent failure to remember her letters when she is examined at Ellis Island. Her escape and weary wandering through the streets of New York in search of her son. The reunion with her son. his wife and their child. The director proved his genius as much in the selection of the cast as by his direction. Witness the fame won

by the sixty year old extra. Margaret Mann, by her magnificent performance in the role of the mother. And the suave characterisation of Earle Foxe as the Prussian ofllcer. a performance that took Foxe out of the class of juvenile comedians and lifted him to the top rank of character actors. And the humanly true portrayals of James Hall, Charles Morton, George Meeker, Pane is X. Bushman, Jr., and June Collyer, all of them achieving everlasting fame for their work in “Four An excellent supporting programme has been arranged, and a beautiful prologue will be staged, featuring th»* theme song of the picture, entitled ••Little Mother.” Xew musical selections have been arranged by Eve Bentley for her Strand Symphony Orchestra.