NATIONAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 601, 1 March 1929, Page 15

NATIONAL

“THE PATRIOT” THIS EVENING

Suspense, like that of a great detective story, marks the unfolding of Emil Jannings’s latest starring picture,

“The Patriot,” which Ernst Lubitsch directed for Paramount, and which will be shown at the National Theatre this evening - .

Plotting against an emperor who boasted that every man in the kingdom was under the direct surveillance of the police, is the dangerous and exciting work which falls to the lot of Lewis Stone, who with Florence Vidor plays opposite Jannings in this picture.

From tli© opening shot, plot, ounter-plot, intrigue and neariscovery keep the audience in symathetic terror. Laid in the court of I the Tsar Paul the First of Russia, “ The Patriot ** brings a gorgeousness of production as a background for an enthralling story, which has rarely been viewed ■ on a local screen. ! Despite the fact that the audience is always conscious of I an enormous palace, great num-

. .bers of soldiers, peasantry, and the plains of Russia., attention is never once distracted from the handful of people used to tell an engrossing and fascinating story. Emil Jannings, as Tsar Paul, gives a characterisation which deserves to be placed beside that of his “Peter the Great,’' “Danton,” and “The Way of All Flesh,” portrayals which already made him one of the greatest pantomimists of all time.

As “The Patriot,” Lewis Stone presents a character which is liner than anything he has done since “Scaramouche.” Florence Vidor as the Countess Ostermann moves through the sequences of this picture with convincing realism, and a suavity which stamps her as one of the screen’s finished artists.

An excellently varied supporting programme will also be shown, and a special musical score played by the augmented orchestra.

Th delicate and difficult work of cutting ‘'Show Boat’ to release" proportions is progressing rapidly at Universal City. It is now down to fourteen reels and in that length it is regarded by all of the studio officials as the outstanding production of the year.