RIO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 24, 8 December 1939, Page 30

RIO

(Universal) This is a very ripe melodrama, with romance, and horror, and grand tragedy laid on in equal thickness by Director John Brahm, and’ with Basil Rathbone, Sigrid Gurie, Victor McLaglen, and Robert Cummings making the picture a little more than a thriller, pure and simple. Paul Reynard, financier, collapses, and the world of stocks and shares goes with him. He is arrested (in Paris) and transported (in a specially chartered ship) to Devil’s Island, near Rio de Janeiro (hence the film’s title). To Rio follow

Irene Reynard, wife-for-a-year, whose sensuous singing for Paul has been interrupted by the police at their wedding anniversary celebration, and Dirk, a faithful soul who calls Paul " The Chief," in anything but McLaglen-like tones. While Rathbone agonises in chains, Sigrid Gurie sings for a_ living, McLaglen, between serving drinks, watches with some disapproval while Robert Cummings (as Gregory, engineer, failure, drunkard), brings about the inevitable. More love follows, more burning of hearts, more agonising for Paul, more troubled looks in Dirk’s dutiful eyes, more swamps, brutality, ants, forests, and a stabbing from behind. Reynard escapes, but is believed dead. Irene now sings for Bill and is more than a little shocked when Paul re-appears (very dramatically, with a light going on and off across his haggard face). Universal don’t explain why, but we imagine that Paul has somehow been recognised, although officially he’s ants’ fodd. At all events, the police appear, gunshots punctuate the final searing of souls, and, among others, Dirk most regrettably dies, dog-like devotion shining to the last out of his faithful eyes, It is more than a twice told tale, but "Rio" tells it well, with the standard of acting to be expected from such players, and really good photography shining out with other details of slick production. It is extravagant to the point of being flamboyant, but not flamboyant enough to make the spit and polish given to this old theme seem other than superfluous. "Rio" is expertly filmed, but even the best of rehashes can hardly be anything but fair to good entertainment.