Judge — March 1937 — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DESPITE THE FACT that it was produced in England, and not withstanding that Alexander Korda made it, “Fire Over Eng- land” is not another delicate little English costume picture. You may be tired, as I certainly am, of these gentle little British educational lec- tures we have been receiving from Eng- land lately, but don't be deceived: “Fire Over England” is, up until the inevitable Board of Trade plug for the dear old Empire, what we on this side call the business. Supereised by Erich Pommer, directed by William K. Howard, photographed by James Wong Howe, and played by the best English actors still working in the old country, this picture is as well pre. sented as any movie I have seen this year. With a German, American, Chinese and Hungarian col- laborating, the production nevertheless has a finesse, a charm, and at times a rousing pace, which is a delight to see; and because of his past record, I imagine we should give Di- rector Howard most of the prize money for the general ex- cellence of this historical melo. drama, Based on an old-fashioned novel by A. E. W. Mason, the picture deals with the adven- tures of a young English boy in the glorious days when England blasted the Spanish Armada, and with it, Spain’s empire, from the seas. The boy and his father are captured by a Spanish grandee after a battle at sea; because the two men are old friends, the Spaniard allows the boy to take his chance at escaping. The lad ends up by making his way to the nobleman’s house —and daughter, where he is nursed back to health, to be- come the most daring of Queen Elizabeth's agents. I shan't g into the plot in any more detail, because it is not a plot movie. There is a scope, a beauty and charm to the production which would be well worth seeing even had not Director Howard kept his story moving in a grand manner which will remind you of the best of the old Fair. banks productions. Raymond Massy, as Philip II, Leslie Banks, as Leiscester, and Lawrence Oliver, as the hero, hardly could have been more aptly cast had the producers combed the British Isles for years. But Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth, gives such a superb characterization as the ugly virgin that even their excellent work seems disjointed. Here really is Elizabeth March 1937 MOVIES BY PARE LORENTZ as we have been told she was: powerful, ugly and capricious;, foxy, ruthless and regal and withal a tired old woman, I would like to go on and tell you about the photography and the music but if you don’t know by now that “Fire Over England” is a first-rate movie, there's no point in both of us wasting our time. I was disappointed in “You Only Live Once” for two reasons, one is that I regard the Director, Fritz Lang, as the finest movie maker in the world; the “That's what 1 mean, Harold; you take things too literally.” other is that, up until his cock-eyed and silly conclusion I thought Lang's first American movie “Fury” a very great picture, the first picture of 1936. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with the construction, or Mr. Lang's di- rection of “You Only Live Once,” neith- er, for that matter, do I have any quarrel with the players. I long have considered Sylvia Sydney the best emotional actress in Hollywood, and she does nothing in “You Only Live Once” to make me think I was wrong. Henry Fonda once gave a good performance.on the stage in “The Farmer Takes a Wife’ and Director Tang Proves it was no flash in the pan by making the young man give a second per- formance worth being called such in this noisy, cold and harsh love story: I do quarrel with the basic plot in the picture; not because it was not put to- gether well, but because it does not seem worth putting together, and certainly hardly worth the best talent in the movie business. As in all Lang's work, old familiar movie characters will seem suddenly very teal to you in “You Only Live Once.” Prison guards act as well as look, like prison guards, and the warden is just the sort of political louse you might ex- pect him to be. Furthermore, the hero, an ex-convict trying to go straight, is a jolly wise-cracking fellow who shakes off prison as though it were no worse than a bad cold. A tough lad to start with, he ends by getting himself and his girl filled full of lead some- where in the pine wood along the Canadian border, You will see as forthright, effective and memorable a pic- ture as you've seen in many a day when you watch Mr. Lang's presuction, but it all is in one ey. You know the ex-convict hasn't a chance from the min- ute he walks out of prison, and you will watch ceety and sadly his approach to his final doom, with his girl grimly and faith. fully sticking with him, but you will not feel a great building power yan will not gather any knowledge of the complex so- cial organization that shoots him down. You will, simply, see a love story with a logical, but tragic ending, and I think Mr. Lang, Miss Sydney and Mr. Fonda can do larger things. The Warner Brothers had a good chance in “Stolen Holi- day” to roll up their sleeves and take a crack at the biggest scandal that has blown France apart since the natives heard about Mad. ame Pompadour and the other gals who were spending their hard-earned francs. The picture starts out by following some of the incidents in the history of a gentleman named Stavisky who began by robbing his papa, and ended by starting a revolution after he had broken half the Frenchmen in France. However, it all turns out to be just another story about a girl with a heart of gold. comicbooks.com