ENTERTAINMENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1922, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS.

EVERYBODY’S. “THE FOUR HORSEMEN” TO-NIGHT. The presentation of a vividly tangible Hell in lurid, ruddy incandescence is but one of a series of the remarkable achievements in production in the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” which commences a local season at Everybody's to-night. Ibanez’s novel is a striking mixture of candour, thought on original lines, and ingenuity in weaving the visions of St. John, as get forth in Revelations, into a powerful denunciation of war. In the fum, the startling contrasts between the 2000-year-old prophecies of the Apostle and the pitilessly depicted modern lives of the characters used to illustrate the truth of the prophetic wisdom of the Book of Books, are intense. The semibarbaric brilliance of the chief city of the great Latin republic of Argentina, and the rude simplicity of estancia life, are depicted. The sons of the daughters of a fiery, dissolute old estanciero, though Argentine at heart, and free of the national hatreds and resentments of the Old World, are drawn by their fathers’ nationalities into the vortex of the Great War, and perish miserably in the German advance in the fratricidal frenzy of the spirit of war, as loosed from Hell by the “Four Horsemen” of Satan. Powerfully allegorical, the film teaches at the same time the futility and horrors of war. It is a stupendous production of twelve reels that take two hours and three-quarters to release, yet holds the absorbed interest for every moment of it. The scenes of Argentine life are illuminating, the magnificence of the Parisian scenes, and of the Chateau on the Marne, the wonderful triumphs of imagination in the visualisation of the visions of St. John, the horrors of war, and the interest the spectator is compelled to take in the pleasure-loving artistic son and daughter of the French side of the family, and in the final awakening of their nobler instincts in the red crucible of war, combine to render the “Four Horsemen” an epic of the screen. Ibanez’s work has something of the directness of Zola, but also it appeals to the imaignation as does that of the elder Dumas, and the film reproduces the spirit of the book admirably, where it does not improve upon it. Seats for either night can now be reserved at Collier’s.

THE PEOPLE’S. The six-reel Selznick production, “The Spenders,” a high-class comedy drama, sparkling with humor and tense with dramatic situations, screens finally tonight at the People’s. The story wliTch finally centres about the New York stock market, sweeps from the glory and majesty of the Rocky Mountains to the wealth and fashions of New York’s millionaire colony. It deals with the inner workings of a deep-laid plan to discredit a clean-living man—the frenzy of Wall Street —the mad revelry in a New York showgirl’s apartments and a police raid when the same revelry is at its height. An excellent characterisation is given by a cast which includes Joseph Dowling, Niles Welch, Claire Adams, and Robert McKim. Episode 3 of “The Blue Fox” also screens finally to-night.