"Old Curiosity Shop" Comes To the Talking Screen

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 36, 15 March 1935, Page 24

"Old Curiosity Shop" Comes To the Talking Screen

British Films Previewed in Wellington During the Past .Week

THE cycle of Dickens films (we are yet to have "David Copperfield" made in Hollywood) is being watched a little anxiously by film producers. The first of them, "Great BExpectations," scarcely lived up to the great expectations of the makers. The buraing question is: Does the public want Dickens onthe screen or not? . After "The Old Curiosity Shop" we should say that the public will want Dickens. Here'is.a-film, made by a British company, which has all the merits of a great entertainment, and brings some understanding of the reason why Dickens was the greatest novelist of last century. It hag cap-

tured all the little human things that have kept the story alive-the weakness of the old grandfather, the flinching spinelessness of Mrs. Quilp, the realisation by little Nell of the eross she has chosen to bear. But the most amusing, the most loathsome, the most lovable figure in the whole film is Quilp, the moneylender. I cannot even tell you his name. He is not a well-known screen figure, but his part of Quilp is one of the most enigmatical and amazing that has even been flashed on 2 talkie screen. He leaps about the chairsone moment he is a pig, the next he is a leaping rat, but always he is the dominant, the central figure. Little Nell is sweetness itself, and the death scene brings just that touch of melodrama that a film of this type demands. The grandfather, too, is a fine old figure. See this picture by all means. (SOMEDY-romance which borders ou the farcical Ben Travers style is served as a fine dish. for light enter-

tainment by B.B.F..in Claude Hulbert’s latest picture, ‘Love at Second Sight," which will start its New Zealand season shortly. . Marian..Marsh, blonde. and Joan. Gardiner, brunette, are two of the quartet, completed by Anthony Bushell, handsome heart-breaker, and » Claude Hulbert, dumb inventor. Further fun is provided by the. senior ip the cast, a millionaire match-king, who doesn’t seem to mind whom his. daughter marries as long as he has an audience for his fish stories. From the time Hulbert and Marian Marsh see each other through the windows of passing trains, their path of roses is thickly strewn with thorns. One of

the biggest of these is the situation in which an irate father not only finds bis daughter dashing about in a man’s pyjamas, but insists that she must marry the wrong man. Nor do things improve as Hulbert’s toothache becomes worse. Bushell answers Nelson’s famous appeal in the absence of the fiance, however, and everybody hopes that the heroine will marry ‘the man she doesn’t intend to-especially when that man has a most romantic singing voice. After many more fish stories and some unaffected love scenes with a grin in them throughout, the wedding day arrives, but neither the bride nor the bridegroom turns up, so the picture finishes just as you wanted it to. The story is simple, and the characters easy to follow, giving one a chance to sit back and laugh without having to strain the ears and eyes for the fun. There are two. particularly. appealing dance songs introduced by Bushell, "Love at First Sight’ and another prettier one for more intimate scenes.