SOUTH OF SUEZ

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 171, 2 October 1942, Page 13

SOUTH OF SUEZ

(Warner Bros.)

WOT a Tangled Web We Weave, When First we Practise to Deceive! I half expected Eric Blore so to sum up South of Suez before the final clinch

and fade out but I find I'll have to do it myself. You may say it’s hackneyed, but so was South of Suez, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable. I haven’t sat through a film that was so vocally enjoyed for many a long day, but the fact that I saw it at a matinee during the school holidays probably explains that. In the opening sequence we are introduced to the hero (George Brent), a diamond mining engineer in Tanganyika, and to another mining engineer (George Tobias) whom, since he has close-cropped hair, thick glasses, talks with a guttural accent and belts the natives (on the tucker-bag and elsewhere) with his jolly sjambok, we have no difficulty whatever in picking es the Villain of the Piece. Mr. Brent joins forces with an English expatriate whom Tobias has been trying to cheat out of his claim. The Englishman, who has promised to join his ever-loving daughter (Brenda Marshall) in Cairo in a month, is murdered by the villain, who frames it on gallant Georgie Brent. However, our hero escapes (witli all the diamonds from the claim, too) after being thrillingly pursued by a posse, and reaches the coast, where he stows away. On board ship he is succoured by a seaman (Eric Blore), and when next we see them Mr. Brent, name changed but moustache intact, has miraculously metamorphosed into. aj

financier (at least, that’s our guess) and’ Mr. Blore into the financier’s-yes, we knew you'd guess-valet, Then begins the search for the puckered sahib’s daughter, with Brent rather en Monte Cristo. The unfortunate girl is found on the verge of penury, eating her heart out in a miserable little country house (36 rms. incl. ballrm, dngrm., 3 drg.rm, svts. quar., us. off., stble.). But the dashing young engineer arrives in time (huzza!) and Love is Born. Then Fate begins to play the hand. The sweet young girl tells George how she hates with an undying hate the villainous young partner who bumped off her papa. Mr. Brent dare not discover himself and waiks pensively homeward, stopping en route to pull a corpse out of the Thames and plant on it his passport, ticket-of-leave, and the medal he won at Mining School. But he has reckoned without Scotland Yard, and on the eve of his betrothal he is yanked off on a charge of having murdered himself. Quel justice poétique! But do not despair, there is still a reel and a-half to go, and in a courtroom scene that would make Lord Reading spin in his grave, justice is ultimately done and the star-crossed lovers are reunited. Not exactly an opus, perhaps, as exhibitors understand the term, but worth almost all of your one-and-sixpence, if it doesn’t mean going out on a wet night.