FIRST LOVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 December 1939, Page 47

FIRST LOVE

(Universal)

A gusty sighing, a suddenly discovered admiration of flowers in bloom, spring breezes, the moon and stars and other natural phenomena, loss of appetite and an urge to write bad poetry and generally behave in a mildly demented fashion are usually taken as the symtoms of young love. With a rather treacly title like First Love to incite them, Universal Pictures must have been tempted to produce something extraspecial in the way of mush, with Deanna Durbin as an adolescent girl growing into a gawky trance. It has been known to happen before, and. sometimes it has quite spoilt a young actress’s future. But nothing of the sort has happened this time. =

Instead, here is a picture as fresh as a breeze and at times as inconsequential, First Love is a charming entertainment, almost free of sickly sentiment but with a feathery lightness and as much seasoning as an Indian curry (for which, thank the director, Henry Koster), Deanna herself sings excellently (notably a tango called "Amapola" which is flamboyant’ and catchy, and Puccini's "One Fine Day" from Madame Butterfly), and she is not slipping back as an actress either. To Eugene Pallette must go the next acting honours: with one rabbit-like twitch of the nose he conveys as much as most actors do in five hundred words. Lewis Howard should make you laugh by the way he does nothing but relax; Helen Parrish does a good job as the pampered society girl; and Leatrice Joy, as her mother, is really (pardon the pun) a joy as the smart matron with an astrology complex. Then there are butlers and maids and chauffeurs and things, who really look like butlers and maids and chauffeurs and things. If the author of First Love was obviously thinking about " Cinderella" when he wrote the screen play, he was no more guilty of plagiarism than every other story-writer in Hollywood, And there is absolutely no pretence about it. There’s even a ball which Deanna is prevented from attending by a nasty relative until helped, not by a fairy god-mother certainly, but by adoring servants. More than that, she must be home by midnight, and when she leaves in haste, she leaves a slipper on the stairway. . So love has come to Deanna Durbin, as one day presumably it will come even to Shirley Temple, and to all the other infant prodigies. It had to happen, but now that it has happened we can only be grateful that the process has been so gradual and the restraint so marked; and that Deanna in the throes of puppy love is hardly less charming and tuneful than when she was merely the smartest of the Three Smart Girls. — E. de M.