MAJESTIC THEATRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 38, 15 February 1939, Page 9

MAJESTIC THEATRE

".MARIE ANTOINETTE.” "Marie Antoinette,” which is the current attraction *at the Majestic Theatre, is a triumph of the motion picture art. More than that, it is a triumph for Norma Shearer. Magnificent in its pageantry, with brilliant costumes and setting flawlessly cast with such famed film names as Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Antia Louisa, Joseph Schildkraut! Gladys George, and scores of others, these are secondary to Miss Shearer’s absorbingly human interpretation. The story has gripping power on the screen because it is so simply told. Miss Shearer’s "Antoinette" is a girl eager to be in love and to be loved, who finds herself married to a moronic husband, a role superbly played by Robert Morley. When he'fails her and his country through weakness of mind and spirit, she seeks escape in mad pleasures and dangerous flirtations. But in the end. she cannot escape her destiny as the last Queen of France. "Stablemates.” A new screen team is introduced in "Stablemates,” in which Wallace Beery is seen in the role of a once brilliant veterinarian who changed to a race track hobo because he was framed into a murder charge. Rooney, fresh from his triumph in "Boys Town,” wins more admirers, if possible, in his characterisation of the stable boy and jockey who befriends Beery in order to get the latter to operate on his injured horse.