THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 12, 15 September 1939, Page 34

THE MAN IN THE IRON

MASK

(United Artists)

Tear up your French history books, your copies of Dumas, and some of your cherished illusions! They'll not be needed these ten months. Hollywood has not only discovered the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask, but also that Louis XIII. was a_ strong and noble king, that his son, Louis XIV., "Le Roi Soleil," was a vicious weakling and was deposed at an early age by his most excellent twin brother, and that Louise de la Valliére (whom up till now we had always regarded as rather a nice girl) was nothing but a blonde cutie with a Brooklyn accent. The more we see of Hollywood’s method of treating the past, the more we think it might be applied to the present. Let’s pretend that things are not what they are.

But does it matter much, after all, whether Hollywood commits assault and battery on historic fact so long as it can give us a rousing cloak-and-sword romance such as this? For myself, I am always willing to barter a whole line of French kings and a handful of dry dates for the clang and flash of rapiers and e gallant ride with the King’s Musketeers down the highways of old France. I have no objection to Maria Theresa being Joan Bennett in a brunette wig so long as she can inspire d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis to such daring deeds, and make love so sweetly in a moonlit garden. I know that not even such a swordsman as the great d’Artagnan himself could ever really have held off twelve opponents all at once; but I like watching Hollywood make him do it. And although historians remains baffled by the mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask, Hollywood's theory (shared with Dumas) is as good as any-and better than some — and Louis Hayward is as good an actor ss anyone I can think of. off-hand for the role of that most intriguing personage. And this film is as enjoyable a piece of swashbuckling fiction as most.