THE CINEMA
Tivoli.)
(Warner.)—" My Sister and I." 46 Deep Valley." (New Gallery,
Deep Valley makes a sincere attempt to please everybody, those who love nature and animals, those who love violence and man- hunts, and those who love love. Miss Ida Lupino lives in a tumbledown shack with a mean father and a mother who, in order to avoid unpleasantness, has retired to bed for good. The waves of hatred which surge up and down the stairs between her irreconcil- able parents have given Miss Lupino a stammer as well as a disregard for the usual feminine impedimenta, and wearing slacks and with her hair like a stork's nest she seeks solace in the woods, accom- panied by her dog. Having had a brief contretemps with a squirrel she meets with a construction gang of prisoners, and a fellow- feeling for these unfortunates lights a spark in her heart which eventually burst into a flaming love for Mr. Dane Clark, one of the prisoners. Mr. Clark escapes one night from a tin but in which he has been incarcerated for a misdemeanour, and the rest of the film is devoted to his secretion by Miss Lupino in various hide-outs and to his ultimate death from bullet-wounds in her arms.
Love strikes quickly in Hollywood' as indeed it must, and it says much for the stars in this film that their highly improbable love affair bears the stamp of authenticity. Miss Lupino is altogether excellent, changing from the speechless fey to the voluble mature with no noticeable jolt, and she fits into her background as snugly as a cork into a bottle. Mr. Clark, too, is admirable as a man who, innately gentle, is nevertheless. gripped by sudden frenzies of rage which he can in no wise controL The realisation that even though he promises again and again to abjure violence he will inevitably be driven by his demon to kill dawns with poignancy over Mr. Clark's cunning-kind face, and we are forced to sympathise where we should condemn. Miss Fay Bainter as the mother who has given up trying gives a touching performance, and the dog, of course, is endowed with more than human understanding. It doesn't quite cough behind its paw when it comes inadvertently upon the lovers, but it does everything short of this in the line of
discretion. * * * * My Sister and I is redeemed from utter damnation by Miss Martita Hunt, who, by standing like a tall lighthouse in the middle of it, rescues this tedious picture from the darkness it deserves. At her base, like a small but solid rock, crouches Miss Barbara Mullen, but, alas, to continue this analogy, the sea around them both is filled with very flat, very wet fish. The young actors and actresses in this film are, with the possible exception of Miss Sally Ann Howes, as limp and as ineffectual as it is possible to be. They are not helped by the script, it is true. The story is one of murder and mystery, the final elucidation of which gives Miss Mullen her first chance to
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