NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 794, 15 October 1929, Page 15

NEW REGENT

LAST DAYS OF “MADAME X” “Madam© X,” now in its last days at the New Regent Theatre, is a vivid drama of mother love, based on the stag© play. Miss Chatterton is seen as the ill-fated “Madame X.” Lewis Stone plays the husband. “Floriot,” and Raymond Hackett the Son and attorney for the defence. Others in the cast are Holmes Herbert, Eugenie Besserer, Mitchell, Lewis, Ullric, Haupt. Sydney Toler, Richard Carle, Claud King, Chappell Dossett and others of note. Willard Mack, adapting the play to the speaking stage, wrote a new type of dialogue that fairly concentrates dramatic meanings and the story moves at a tremendous pace, through the use of silent film technique combined with the use of speech. It is the first time a perfect blend of the two techniques has been achieved, making it infinitely more forcible than any talking picture heretofore produced. Lionel Barrymore has blazed a new trail in direction in the great drama, and the perfect cast that enacts the story makes it a living, breathing reality. The programme includes short talkie items as supports. A play which was a sensation in ! New York last season, “The Letter,” lhas been transplanted to the screen j and will be the feature attraction at i the Regent Theatre on Saturday. 1 Jeanne Eagels, well known stage star, | has the leading role. The action takes place on a rubber ; plantation on the outskirts of Singa- j pore. Miss Eagels portrays the wife 1 of a planter. She falls in love with a ] wastrel, keeping up the affair for sev- j era! years. Finding, however, that he i no longer- cares for her, she kills him. How the affair is finally cleared up, and how the couple face life again i make this one of the most interesting stage plays ever filmed. All members of the cast supporting Miss Eagels are stage players, including O. P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall. Jean de Limur directed. “The Letter” is described as being the most sensational all-talkie drama yet produced by Paramount.