The Cinema
"Wings in the Dark." At the Plaza THE best guide in a thick fog is a blind man. That is the basic idea of W ings in the Dark ; but the treatment is inge- niously original and the result far-fetched, perhaps, but very exciting. Ken Gordon, a famous American airman, is absorbed in the problems of "Blind Flying "—of flying, that is, by instruments only, without sight of the ground—when he loses the use of his eyes in a trivial accident. After a period of despair he sets to work once more, determined now to invent an aeroplane which even he, a blind man, could fly safely. He has the help of a girl aviator, Sheila Mason, who allows him to believe that he is earning money for magazine articles when really she is earning it for him by doing aerobatics at country fairs. Eventually, in order to raise further money for Gordon's experiments, Sheila undertakes a non-stop flight from Moscow to New York. The climax comes when she runs into dense fog over the American coast, and Gordon goes up alone in his new machine to guide her in.
All this may be a little hard to believe, but the story is brilliantly put over with a wealth of those tersely realistic touches in which Hollywood always excels. The acting, too, of Carey Grant and Myrna Loy in the chief parts helps to lift the film above the level of purely sensational melodrama, and the treatment of the psychological aspect of Gordon's blind- ness is sensitive and sincere, without sentimentality. But the personal drama is naturally slight compared with the adven- turous tension of the final sequences, when Sheila is approach- ing the American coast, and wireless messages and broadcast announcements of her progress are flashing to and fro. Half the excitement in this kind of picture depends on the vivid handling of these technical details, and I never 'remember them better done.
"My Heart is Calling." At the New Gallery Piromumv-Ahe great success of One Night of Love will encourage other films about opera singers. They are less expensive to produce than musical comedies, and plenty of operatic- music is waiting ready-made. But it is not so easy to invent the right kind of story—a story in which the music will blend naturally with the action, like bubbles in champagne. One Night of Love owed a good deal of its effectiveness, I think, to the skilful use of familiar songs at appropriate moments. The fiery music of Carmen is heard as the plot approaches its crisis, and One Fine Day, from Madame Butterfly, gains in emphasis from the contrast it suggests between the heroine's singing and her private life—for the indispensable Monteverdi has come back to her, as the audience knows,• just before the song begins.
There arc no such subtleties in My Heart is Calling— a rather mechanical comedy about an opera company stranded at Monte Carlo, where the director of the opera house (Hugh Wakefield) refuses to .take risks with unknown singers. If only he could be persuaded to hear the company's prize- tenor (Jan Kiepura); all might be well, and the plot is largely concerned with the efforts of the manager of the company' (Sonnie Hale) to secure an audition. The best scene comes at the end, when the visiting company forces itself on public attention by giving an open-air performance of Tosca in the square outside the opera house while an orthodox-performance of the same opera is proceeding 'Within; but in its musical aspect the film is not very satisfying. Kiepura sings well, but too often he is required to singmediocre ballads—possibly because this kind of picture is expected to provide "theme songs" for gramophone records. The .heroine is played by Marta Eggerth, who will be remembered as Caroline Ester- hazy in Unfinished Symphony, but for some reason she has very little chance this time to use her pleasant voice. The film's striving after comedy leads most of the cast into over- acting ; only Ernest Thesiger, as the opera director's secretary; gives a natural performance. His grave elegance is arefresh- ing point of repose in this restless attempt to make a slight story amusing by underlining the jokes.
CHARLES DAVY.
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