STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 May 1940, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

“THE RAINS CAME.” “The Rains Came,” a superb picturisation of Louis Bromfield's famous novel, is screening to crowded houses at the State Theatre. This Twentieth Century-Fox triumph presents four great stars and an outstanding cast and should not be missed by lovers of good pictures. On the same programme is the great March of Time, “The Battlefields of England.” “OVER THE MOON.” “Over the Moon,” a fast moving comedy romance of refreshing originality replete with hilarious humour, unusual situations and lavish splendour •n glorious technicolour, was specially written for Merle Oberon. The picture will be screened at the State Theatre on Friday. It is Miss Oberon's first picture since her highly successful appearance in “Wuthering Heights.” “Over the Moon” is praised by the entire London press and is said to be one of Alexander Korda’s greatest triumphs because of its general polish, originality and highly entertaining story in gorgeous technicolour settings. Besides Merle Oberon, who plays the leading role, there is in the cast Rex Harrison, Ursula Jeans, Robert Douglas and many others. If the essence of romance is the weaving of day-dreams into life, then Alexander Korda’s “Over the Moon” is the cream of romantic stories. All the “stuff that ‘romantic’ dreams are made on” have found their way into the composition cf this gay story, which discovers Merle Oberon as an impoverished orphan in Yorkshire, and dances her as a millionaire heiress across Europe. The fanciful ingredients are less important than the pace, hilarity and comic sequences of Miss Oberon’s bewildered transformation into Europe’s richest playgirl. Only she is stubborn, and pig-headed. She scoops shovelfuls out of her millions and scatters them over lier cavalcade of hangers-on, but all the time she keeps her head, and in spite of complications, her heart. That is not so hard as it may seem, because she had already lost it to Rex Harrison, who took a chance When she was poor, clinched it a little uneasily when she became, rich, and threw it away when she became intolerable. A good doctor and an honest man can find something better to do than romp about as Mr “Jane Benson.” Miss Jane Benson is the young woman whom Miss Oberon portrays. Instead, he contracts himself, paradoxically, to adulation and unhappiness in a pretentious Swiss nursing home for wealthy feminine hypochondriacs.