The Cinema
"Le Petit Roi." At the Rialto Cinema
ROBERT LIEN, the remarkable youngster of Pail de Carotte, is seen here as Michel I, the boy king of a troubled Ruritania. His brutal father is dead—assassinated—and his mother, whom he believes to be also dead, is actually living in exile. The story shows him gradually realizing his lonely situation, and leads on—after he has been wounded by a bomb thrown during his coronation—to a meeting with his mother on the Riviera, where he has been ordered for his health.
The most striking quality of this picture is its avoidance of most of the usual Ruritanian conventions. The gloomy atmosphere of conspiracy that surrounds the boy king, immured in his battlemented palace, is effectively emphasized, and Julien Duvivicr's direction introduces many graphic pictorial effects. Robert Lynen is again wonderfully good-- perfectly natural and yet extremely appealing—and it is a tribute to his performance that the film's happy ending is a decided disappointment. I should like to have seen more of Michel's struggles with his difficult destiny.
Two other remarks might be made about this French talkie. It is good publicity for the French Riviera. It will not be shown in Roumania.
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