I WAS AN ADVENTURESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 76, 6 December 1940, Page 51

I WAS AN ADVENTURESS

(20th Century Fox)

HoeLLYwoop is showing further signs of having discovered ballet. Recently we had "Florian" in which Baronova was given a chance to prove to

filmgoers that ballet is a little more than a series of rotations in a abbreviated skirt. Then came Zorina in "On Your Toes,’ and now comes Zorina again in "TI Was an Adventuress" which, although it is chiefly concerned with the escapade of a couple of confidence tricksters and an ex-jewel thief, diverts suddenly into the beautiful "Swan Lake" ballet.

Zorina was one of several brilliant | baby ballet stars discovered some years ago on the Continent. Irina Baronova and Tatiana Riabouchinska, who have both toured New Zealand, were two others. The fragile Riabouchinska has stuck to ballet; Baronova also remained faithful until, presumably, the fact that the European centres of ballet were more preoccupied with blitzkriegs and air raids, brought her to Hollywood. Zorina went straight to Hollywood via Broadway. But to return to "I Was an Adventuress." Zorina is the fake Countess Vronsky, most important member of a trio of jewel thieves and confidence tricksters who work the _ better-class pleasure resorts of Europe.@ Unfortunately the Countess falls in love with and marries one of her victims, so the other two (who are Erich von Stronheim and Peter Lorre) get to work on the ex-Countess. There are unpleasant complicationsafter all it’s hardly comfortable to have a house full of friends and relations systematically robbed by one of your guests and not be able to say a word about it. But true love irons out every wrinkle, and apparently reformed jewel thieves can make delightful wives. Zorina has’ more acting and less dancing to do than in any previous picture and comes through well. She has good looks and undoubted personality-an American magazine described her as "handicapped by facial evidences of intelligence." But the pleasantest surprises are our old friends Erich von Stronheim and Peter Lorre, as sinister a couple of rogues as ever picked a pocket of solid paste diamonds. Lorre, whom Hollywood has hardly treated as well as he deserves, is a truly pathological case, unable to resist the simplest thievery, but doing it all with the most charming, self-deprecating air. We almost forgot to mention that Zorina dances delightfully, and that the extract from "Swan Lake" is superbly mounted. But why not give us the whole ballet? We also forgot to mention Richard Greene-but that’s excusable,