REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1940, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

“THE LIGHT THAT FAILED.” Masterton audiences will welcome the opportunity of seeing the screen's supreme romantic actor, Ronald Colman. when he appears at the Regent Theatre tonight in the brilliant adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s immortal story, “The Light That Failed.” A best seller for three generations, “The Light That Failed” is a powerful romantic drama, set in London and the Sudan during the closing years of the last century, unfolding in turn blazing action, love, and self-sacrifice. The picture provides most realistic battle scenes, re-enactments of the famous battles between the British and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies of the Sudan in the campaign of the ’nineties, which resulted in the conquest of the Sudan by the British. In the story it is during one of these battles that Dick Heldar, ar-tist-adventurer, meets Torpenhow, war correspondent, and the friendship, which makes this novel one of the strongest ever written in the English tongue, begins. The role of Torpenhow is perfectly portrayed by Walter Huston. Others in the big cast include Ida Lupino, Muriel Angelas (one of Paramount's “Golden Circlers,” who makes her American film debut in this picture), Dudley Digges, and many others. It has fallen to the lot of the one man in Hollywood who can do it to portray the role of the romantic Englishman of action in one of the most adventurous of pictures by one of the world’s greatest writers of the period when the British Empire was in its golden age. Thus there is Ronald Colman portraying the theme role. Pathos and drama are the keynotes of this great picture. From the vivid action of a soldier of fortune on active service to the poignant emotion of an artist in his studio, fighting the terror of the inexorable advance of blindness, Colman presents his characterisation with the brilliance and faithfulness picture patrons have learned to expect from this great actor. A splendid array of featurettes include the latest Australian newsreel, a ■bright musical, a splendid Sportlight number on “Judo” experts, and a ludicrous Popeye cartoon. The plans are at Messrs Steele and Bull’s shop and the theatre, and early booking is essential.