AMUSEMENTS

Taihape Daily Times, 14 November 1917, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS

THREE STARS "The Faded Flower" is a five-part Ivan feature with a story that gets right away from the conventional. It is artistic in subject and treatment, intensely human in theme and character drawing, and touches a strongly the chords of pity and"' sympathy. It lis deeply-pathetic ; without being moribid, 'dtamaticr- " ; A\*ithouV dropping to finelodrama,-and no -m-ean factor in the .success of"'the 'picture is the'excellent production and very high : quality of the acting. Marguerite. Snow,-? wt&> heads the list, isrnoted for the consistency; and value of her work: as the Princess in "The-Million Dollar Mystery;" and in. various Metro productions. Miss Snow has been seen to 'great advantage, and, in "The Faded Flowerd," she gets an even greater op--1 portunity to display her talents. The fourth episode of the "Mysteries of ; Myra' 5 and other subjects will be -shown. This programme for to-night only. i'

; "THE* BIRTH OF A NATION.'' * The management at the Three Stars •Pictures promise a great attraction on Thursday next. "The Birth of a .Nation" commences a second season. The story is divided into two phases. The first depicts the war itself, in which the fortunes, of the two families, one of tltc South and the North are recounted The terrors of the war particularly the Civil War are illustrated, with an artistry and realism thoroughly typical of David W. Griffith Many of the spectacles, both panomarie and in detail, are more than wonderful. The second part of the story deals with the reconstruction period after the signing of peace. Unfortunately for the exhausted and impoverished nation, and in particular for the South, the assassination of Lincoln deprived the country of the ser- | vices of the one man who could have ! guided the destinies with a firm, sure yet benevolent hand. A mistaken attitude towards the newly-freed negro slaves led to excesses and outrages on the negro militia and this in turn promoted the formation by the whites for their own protection, of such societies as the "Klu-Klux-Klan" and the "Knight of the White Camellia." It is mainly with the activities of the "Klu-Klux-Ivlan" that the latter part of the picture deals. And here, again, the producer has achiaved many wonderful scenes. One scene that is particularly telling is a charge en masse by all the clansmen through a townheld and defended by negroes. Neither labour nor expense was spared to achieve historical eractitude. As an illustration of this, the producer, for the scene depicting the assassination of Lincoln, had built an exact replica of the interior of Ford's Theatre, and in another scene (of the famous negro legislature of Georgia) he reconstructed the chamber in its entirety. Two well-told love romances run through the story. "The Birth of a Nation >'

promises to be one of the greatest treats in store for the picture-going people of Taihape.