MYSTERY THRILLER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 14

MYSTERY THRILLER

GREAT DETECTIVE FILM AT STRAND “AT THE VILLA ROSE” A brutal and mysterious murder, committed under the cover of a spiritualist seance, was the crime which became the talk of Southern France. The greatest detective in all France took up the case, and his tracking down of the slayer made an absorbing thriller when “At the Villa Rose” commenced a season at the Strand last evening. In a palatial villa on the Riviera, there lived and eccentric old woman who “was as rich as Croesus.” Her collection of jewels was the finest in Europe. The failing energies of her life were concentrated on spiritualism and she sheltered a girl who had been a trick medium and who, in the old woman’s home, further developed her artistic performance to please her benefactress. who had been the dupe. oC less scrupulous “mediums” before. Under cover of the seance, the old woman was silently murdered. The room was in darkness, and there was nothing but a confused jumble of vague shadows and then —silence The police found the body in the early morning, but the villa was empty. The situation teemed with possibilities and the audience was given a baffling enigma to decide who was the guilty one. The evidence pointed in several directions at once. There was the young girl—apparently she fled from the house after the murder. She had bought chloroform and it. was by that chemical that the murder was committed. There was a scented and curled exquisite who had been heard to say he would willingly murder the old woman for just one of her jewels —the ear-ring which had belonged to Madame de Maintenon. He had been seen in a furiously driven motor-car near the villa on the night of the murder. The third suspect was a mysterious Englishwoman who had visited the villa on the fateful night, and who also disappeared after the seance and its tragic sequel. There was the sinister maid-servant, torn with jealousy and capable of anything. She must have had a hand in it. Then there was the pleasant young Englishman who was the trick medium’e. fiance. MURDERER UNMASKED The sorting out of all these people —their parts in the vivid drama —was left in the hands of the genial French detective, Hanaud, who was an unswerving nemesis. There was a great climax to the story when the murderer was unmasked following the French police custom of a reconstruction of the crime on the spot. The guilty one was asked to pretend he was the murderer, while the detective occupied the chair the old woman had been sitting in when she was killed. The bizarre but apparently harmless play-acting took a sudden and dramatic turn when the murderer incautiously corrected the detective in the re-enactment of the Incidents of a week before. As the great detective, Austin Trevor, gave a great performance. His light good humour masked a deadly steadfastness of purpose, and his changes from the indolent humorist to the hunter on the trail were startling, and had the audience laughing and shivering in turn. Nola Baring shouldered a difficult part as the trick medium, but did her work well. The supporting cast was excellent. “At the Villa Rose” was a British Dominion Films production, and the voices were excellent. The slight French accent wa3 a pleasing novelty, and did not detract from the clarity of the reproduction. The settings for the picture were most striking, particularly the magnificent villa where the murder was committed, and which gave the picture its name. The picture was adapted from a novel by A. E. W. Mason, and ranks with “Rookery Nook” and “Disraeli” as a proof of British merit in the film world. The supporting programme included a juvenile comedy and a universal newspaper news reel.