BIG PICTURE FILM.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1917, Page 7

BIG PICTURE FILM.

GREATER THAN "QUO VADIS." •Both as a marvel of film production and as a popular favorite, "Quo Vadi?" lias been ousted from its proud position at the head of all film plays. There is a new picture in which all the most wonderful stunts of the cinema man have been .combined with a thrilling play from the pen of the great Italian author, Gabriele d'Annunzio. The film is called "Cabiria.'' It is at once the most costly, the most successful, the most spectacular and the most complete picture play ever constructed. The Itala Film Company, of Turin, Italy, already noted for its enterprise and originality, is responsible for this picture. Apart from the plot and the live interest of the play, both of'which are ingenious and absorbing, the picture is remarkable because its scenes are drawn from the Punic wars—the long and fearful contests between ancient Rome and ancient Carthage for the dominion of the world. These wars took place in the third century before Christ, and that is the epoch in which "Cabiria" is laid. No more fitting time could have been chosen for the production of the film than the present. The world is distraught with the horrors of the present war, and historians toll us that this present war against Germany exceeds in magnitude only the Punic wars of 21S B.C. That was a war of extermination —a war for very existence, as this one is. It ended in the triumph of Home. "Cabiria" will be screened in New Plymonth for the first time at the Empire Theatre next Monday night. Box plans are now on view at Collier's.