The Cinema
"Chopin's Farewell." At the Curzon WE are asked—indeed, implored by a preliminary caption —not to regard this French production as an attempt at accurate biography. One might reply that that is all very well, but surely such a film loses a good deal of interest if the Chopin presented to us is mainly a creation of the producer's imagination. Chopin's Farewell, however, skilfully directed by Geza de Bolvary, is at least free from vulgarity and has some pleasant moments. We encounter Chopin first as a young man in Warsaw—in love with music, in love with Constantia Gladkowska, in love with his oppressed country, where a revolution is brewing. He dreams of manning the barricades, but his friends feel that his music is needed to win sympathy for Poland abroad. They persuade him to go to Paris, promising to summon him back before a blow is struck, but actually the revolution is due to occur almost immediately, and Chopin gets news of it while he is waiting to give his first recital to a fashionable Parisian audience. He starts to play the minuet from Mozart's E flat Symphony, but the thought of his comrades in danger seizes him, and he breaks into a fiery polonaise.
This is the best episode in the film, which afterwards is mainly concerned with Chopin's growing attachment to George Sand, and with her schemes for his success in face of the hos- tility of critics and publishers. Liszt is her ally ; and various other famous figures of the period—Alfred de Musset, Hugo, Balzac, Dumas—pass fleetingly across the screen. Before long Constantia arrives in Paris, only to find that Chopin is about to leave with George Sand for Majorca ; and here, with tactful abruptness, the story ends.
English audiences may feel that too much depends on the rendering of a particular phase of French social history, and it is unfortunate that Chopin wrote mainly piano music, for the piano is still the hardest instrument to reproduce. The film's dramatic interest is always slender and sometimes a trifle insipid, but there is a good deal of pleasure to be had from its unusual atmosphere and elegantly romantic style. Jean Servals is an attractive Chopin ; George Sand, played by Lucienne le Marchand, is a vivid and picturesque personality ; and there is good acting all through the smaller parts. This is hardly a production for those in search of straightforward entertainment, but as a kind of historical decoration, with a musical background, it is an agreeable change from the loud voices of the present.
"Kid Millions." At the London Pavilion MR. EDDIE CANTOR is a comedian with a purpose—or with . several purposes. He uses his radio popularity to round off his jokes with a few serious words on some topical question, and I am sure that he would like, if he could, to bring true all the dreams of all the poor children all over the world. This desire is evident in the concluding sequence of Kid
Millions -
a coloured fantasy of a free Ice-cream factory, with"Hollywood beauties handing out mountainous sundaes to a crowd of delighted youngsters. There are some lively and ingenious details—but compare the adventures of children in one of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. Where Disney's treatment is simple and gay, Cantor's is elaborate and mechanical ; and the prevailing weakness of Kid Millions is that the humour never" bubbles •up freely. It has the air of being turned out in packets from an apparatus guaranteed to synthesize some kind of a plot out of scraps of comedy and scraps of music.
Eddie Wilson, a poor boy from New York, goes to Egypt in search of a huge fortune left him by his wandering father, an Egyptologist. Various other would-be legatees are on the trail, and the search leads through the Cairo bazaars to a sheik's palace. The humours of the harem were exhausted long ago, and the only novelty is a caricature of Mr. Gandhi— futile and tasteless. Kid Millions is Cantor's worst film for years, but its spectacular song-and-dance numbers will no doubt ensure it a certain popularity.
CHARLES DAVY.
Previous page
