TIVOLI AND EVERYBODY’S

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 715, 15 July 1929, Page 15

TIVOLI AND EVERYBODY’S

“THE GIRL ON THE BARGE” Universal's “The Girl on the Barge,” which is now being screened at the Tivoli and Everybody’s Theatres, is a photoplay of unusual charm. It has everything that makes on outstanding picture—beautiful natural locale, a powerful story and a capable cast all under inspired direction. Jean Hersholt, the beloved character star, has the leading role, into which he puts all his ability to bring out of what might be an ordinary villain, the character of a mean-tempered old man who is more to be pitied than censured. Only Hersholt could have made a sympathetic character out of what would have been a conventional role in less expert hands. Sally O’Neill gives a spirited performance in the title role. She is splendid as the ignorant little girl who has never been on land, who has spent her life on a coal barge plying between New York and Buffalo. This is one of the biggest roles she has ever had and she acquits herself with high honours. The story is from one of Rupert Hughes’s most popular short stories. It concerns the love affair of a girl on a barge and a boy on a tug which triumphs over the ingrained feud which exists between tug and barge folk. The scenery used in the picture is that of the story. In spending weeks on location at the Champlain and Eerie canals in New York director Edward Sloman has captured on the screen a background utterly free of artificiality, teeming with the real life of the story’s locale. A typical New York “cop” whose devotion to his duty is something to be marvelled at, played an important role —indeed one of the two most important roles—in “His Captive Woman,” the second feature at both theatres Milton Sills enacts the part, and he is co-featured with Dorothy Mackaill, who plays the role of a girl of the white light district who murders a man and escapes tc the tropics. Sills is sent after her and on the way back they are wrecked on a desert island. The denouement comes as a complete surprise and Sills makes of the character one of the finest impersonations in his career. This is a George Fitzmaurice production adapted from ••Changeling,” a story written by Donn Byrne.