NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 15

NEW REGENT

“THE VIRGINIAN” With big city night life, metropolitan underworlds and the life behind the footlights furnishing a plethora of themes for audible moving pictures, it is a welcome interlude when an all-talking film such as “The Virginian” comes to town. “The Virginian” is deserving of even more than comparative praise, however. Its value as high type entertainment does not lie alone in the fact that it is different from the general run of pictures. Its value as entertainment lies in its own intrinsic worth as a talking picture fabrication of rich romance, epic drama and immortal humour. Here is a picture that “gets you and holds you,” as showmen say. It is a faithful reproduction in talking film of the renowned novel by Owen Wister and the play. That alone, should bo recommendation enough for any doubting Thomas. Nearly everyone is familier with the story. In the medium of the all-talking screen the immortal characters of the Wister classic live and breathe. All the glamorous sounds of the great outdoors are faithfully reproduced. Cowboys yell as their herd is driven, bellowing, through a swift river. Ranchers chant their typical ditties under the stars by the camp-fire. Guntoting enemies bark their savage epithets. The lovers speak their hearts in the murmuring pine forest. Add to this an ensemble of perfect character portrayals by Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, Eugene Pallette and others, and you have a picture that is definitely a masterpiece in the new Show World of films that talk. Chief among the supports Is a comic interlude, “At the Gate,” a breezy sketch with a Jewish flavour. One of the now famous series of musical cartoons follows, entitled “Yankee Hoodie.” A Pathe Sound News and Audio Review completed the programme. Mr. Whiteford Waugh breaks new ground in the overture when the orchestra runs through a musical equivalent ©£ the ages p£ mao* -