THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 49, 31 May 1940, Page 30

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

(Paramount) This is Kipling, plus Colman, two negatives that still mean no, and two wrongs that do not make a right. An artist wins success as an artist, goes through certain emotions as set out by Kipling, and then goes blind. It is all very automatic. If it is anything, it is a gesture: a gesture in the true Gunga Din manner. :

Colman’s picture of Kipling’s Richard Heldar has little of the force of Kipling’s. This is understandable, for William H, Wellman, producer-director, has been at no pains to lift the picture out of the rut of close adherence to the Kipling method, and there is not much of Kipling that corresponds to real life, or will bear even the small test of realism involved in photographic portrayal. For Kipling, plot did not matter, character did not matter. Both were simply means to his end, and that end was often the evocation by grand phrases or pungent doggerel, of more or less superficial emotions. With them, Kipling was the great artist, the artist of the heroics, of self-sacrifice, of gallantry. But with them alone — and he seldom exceeded himself-Kipling was not the complete artist. For this modern medium, bereft of the influence of Kipling’s power over words, "The Light That Failed" has proved too onedimensional. So Colman, pretty onedimensional in his own right, cannot wave the Kipling banner with much success. Undiluted Kipling on the screen is no more successful than undiluted Colman, In these times, they are not sufficiently subtle. Any opportunity the story gave him for subtlety, Wellman has missed. The picture accentuates the deficiencies of Kipling, and Kipling is not the author to disguise the deficiencies of Colman. For those who like Colman, however, it is good, sound Colman. In one brief moment, Walter Huston is priceless, bestirring himself, as he says, on behalf of his friend the artist, who has gone to the artistic dogs. For the rest, this part has the same limiting quality of sameness as the others, shared by Muriel Angelo, Ida Lupino, and Dudley Digges, Not an excellent picture, or first-class, or very good-but good enough.