DECEPTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 416, 13 June 1947, Page 13

DECEPTION

(Warner Bros.)

|? is 51 years since a certain May Irwin and a gentleman named John C, Rice kissed one another in front of a movie camera while 50

feet of film were exposed, thereby creating a public furore and the first demand far screen censorship. My memory fortunately does not. extend nearly as far back as that now-famous embrace, but I think I have had sufficient experience of screen osculation to enable me to write (if I felt so inclined) a@ monograph on the subject. One of the salient facts which such a work would record is that after passing through the glutinous Valentino era, the subsequent peck-and-nibble period, and that other period during which film heroes and heroines were as likely to salute one another with a slap in the face as a smack on the lips, we are now getting right back to the prolonged pasturing favoured by the redoubtable Miss Irwin and Mr. Rice in 1896. The newest exponents of this type of public exhibitionism are Bette Davis and Paul Henteid who indulge in it (I think I may say ad nauseam) in this film, Deception. "There’s nothing, nothing in the whole world, except us," he exclaims ecstatically at one point, while browsing over her countenance. There’s nothing, nothing in the whole picture, either-noth-ing, that is, except Claude Rains whose antic fury as an eccentric composer named Hollenius is at least more diverting than the spectacle of Miss Davis and Mr. Henreid, a very jealous couple, kissing and making up interminably, or of Mr. Heinreid (an allegediy gifted ’cellist) sweating visibly as he saws out the solo part in the latest Hollenius concerto. Incidentally there must be more money than one thought in the composing business: this Hollenius fellow lives in the style of an Eastern potentate in a house the size of the Taj Mahal (and

~~ just about as magnificent) and thinks nothing of tossing a grand piano, a case of vintage champagne, or a luxury penthouse to a favoured pupil as a mark of his affection and esteem. It’s this open-handed habit of his which arouses certain not-unfounded suspicions in the neurotic ’cellist when he learns that his new wife (Miss Davis) has been at the receiving end. He starts to choke her, but she says she didn’t, so he kisses her instead, Then he thinks maybe she did after all, but she still says she didn’t, so he kisses her again. Then Hollenius, playing a dirty game, gives him his big chance to play the ’cello and he’s delighted, but she’s a bit worried, so that’s an excuse for some more facial grazing. And then she gets properly bogged down among all the lies she’s ‘been telling and shoots her way out, hitting Hollenius in his shirt-front. And then she .... And then... . And ..«. Sorry. Just thinking about the story must have made me doze off.

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