“MADAME X”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 777, 25 September 1929, Page 17

“MADAME X”

PRIVATE SCREENING THIS MORNING FINE TALKIE DRAMA A special private screening was given in the New Regent Theatre this morning of “Madame X,” a particularly lino all-talking film which will"“shortly be exhibited here. “Madame X” is the talking film version of the play made famous by the great Sarah Bernhardt, with Ruth Chatterton, one of the most capable actresses in the “talkies,” portraying the chief role. The new picture is a vivid talking adaptation of the stage play and features some new developments in talking screen technique that was created and perfected by director Lionel Barrymore. This technique is neither of the silent screen nor the stage, but combines the technique of both with some original ideas never before worked out. The cast is a large and a notable one, with many stage and screen celebrities. Lewis Stone, a famous stage actor before he adopted the screen as his medium of dramatic expression, plays the hard, relentless “Floriot,” the htus'band of “Madame X.” who casts her off for her one indiscretion, causing her downfall, a gradual degradation that reaches the depths of murder. Raymond Hackett plays her son. whom she abandons in babyhood and does not see again Lintil he is a practising attorney at the French bar and, without knowing who she is. pleads her case at the eOLirt of justice. Others in the cast are Etigenie Besserer, who plays the kind-hearted nurse.; Ullric Haupt. the scoundrel whom “Madame X” kills when he plans to blackmail her husband and bring disgrace on her son, Holmes Herbert, Mitchell Lewis, John P. Edington, Sidney Toler, Richard Carle. Carroll Xye, Claud King and Chappell Dossett. Harry Lacnman, having finished “Compulsory Husbands,” started on “Under the Greenwood Tree,” at first intended as a part “talkie - .” After seeing the first “talkie” rushes of this picture, the executive ordered him to make it an all-talkie. “Under the Greenwood Tree” will be released in New Zealand shortly.