New Films In London Entertainments Herr Oscar Homolka, whose two appearances in this country-on the stage with Miss Flora Robson in Close Quarters and on the screen as Kruger in Rhodes of Africa-fully supported the reputation he had gained abroad, is to be seen this week at the Tivoli in Sabotage, a film ver- sion of Conrad's novel " The Secret Agent." At the Regal there is an adapta- tion of Mr. Somerset Maugham's play The TentSh Man, and at the Empire Laurel and Hardy return in a full-length farce based on a short story by W. W. Jacobs. TIVOLI Sabotage.-In all the films Mr. Alfred Hitchcock has made he has always shown a willingness to lay most of his cards on the table at the outset. In this very free adapta- tion of Conrad's novel, the first few feet let us into the secret of the film's intentions. The lights of London go out, sabotage is whispered, sand is found at the power station, and Verloc (Herr Oscar Homolka) is seen washing his hands in the little East End cinema run by himself and his wife (Miss Sylvia Sidney). Within another few moments it is made clear that his wife looks upon him as a harmless and amiable person; clear that the greengrocer's assistant next door to the cinema is a detective; and c:ear that Verloc will under- take the task of leaving a high explosive bomb in an underground station on Lord Mayor's Day. Everything, therefore, depends on the behaviour of the bomb. Is it to be the means of gathering suspense, of focusing attention on the normal life of London now threatened, or is it to be merely the climax of a conven- tional and artificial " thriller " ? Thle answer is that Mr. Hitchcock concentrates so much on the building up of an atmosphere of sus- pense, with typical and rather too frequent expressions of Cockney humour, that he dses not realize how much he is thinning that atmosphere by becoming absorbed in the timing and theatrical mechanics of the bomb. He neglects the character of Verloc which Conrad made so subtle and contradictory. Verloc, because the cinema is watched, hands the parcel containing the bomb to his brother- in-law. a boy of 12. The boy does not know what the parcel contains, but he is told that it must be delivered by 1.45. The audience knows that that is the time fixed for the bomb to go off, and Mr. Hitchcock depends entirely for the excitement of the boy's journey by omnibus, with the constant delays through the congestion of traffic, upon the relationship between the clocks seen on the route and the parcel the boy is carrying. At 1.45 the boy and the bomb are still on the omnibus. and at that precise moment the omnibus and all its occupants cease to exist. With the explosion the film also comes to an end, except for one brilliant moment when Verloc faces his wife across the table on which there lies a carving knife. Their eyes meet, and in Verloc's there is the certain knowledge of his own fate. The script does not allow Herr Homnolka to develop his portrait of Verloc as fully as one would have liked, but within the limits imposed upon him his acting is remarkable in its power and restraint. REGAL The Tentth Mall.-This film gets off the mark with the throbbing urgency of a speed-boat. " Nine men out of ten are knaves or fools," is the refrain to which its powerful engines pulse, and George Winter, the buccaneering carecrist, is soon in mid-channel: if his wife persists in her petition for divorce notihing can save him and his aristocratic, financially de- pendent father-in-law from ruin. Prudish con- stituents take fright at the rumour, and the film, with a magnificent burst of speed, shows George just managing to bully his wife into loyalty and beginning an election on whichl his prestige in the City depends. At this point the engines suddenly choke, and the boat, most of its driving force spent, no longer cleaves the water. In Mr. Somerset Mlaugham's stage play, of which the film is an adaptation, this election no doubt sustained the impetus of the narrative, being at once descriptive and dramatic; but here the description of an Fnglish general election, interesting as it may be in itself, is dramatically dead. It causes virtte to leak out of the story of whicl it is ostensibly part, and the buccaneer's subsequent cncounter with the one just man in ten, his change of heart, and his o'er hasty suicide recover little of the film's original force. Mr. John Lodge carries the cynical hero vigor- ously through his shady adventures, giving recklessness an agreeable touch of swaggering gallantry; Mr. Athole Stewart supplies with- out excess the amiability of an aristocratic opporttinist and city dupe; and Miss Antoinette Cellier brings an air of sincerity to the wife, in whose psychology the film takes no genuine interest. EMPIRE Onr Relations.-This film is " based " upon perhaps the most successful of all W. W. Jacobs's short stories, " The Money-Box." " Based," when it comes to the relationship between a story in print and its version on the screen, is an elastic word, and the two in ques- tion bear no more resemblance to each other than a man might to his second cousin once removed. Jacobs relied not only on comic situation but on subtlety in his drawing of character, and subtlety is not exactly the strong suit of Laurel and Hardy. The director of this film has had sense enough to realize that, and Ouir Relations is little more than a long and by no means unamusing piece of slap-stick. Laurel and Hardy " double " themselves, they are at once two respectable and home-loving husbands and two sailors on shore determined to save their money by handing it over to one of their mates-here the pale ghost of the original Jacobs story is to be discerned. Naturally they want their money back almost as soon as they have parted with it, and naturally the respectable Laurel and Hardy, while dining quietly with their wives, are mis- taken at the restaurant for the disreputable Laurel and Hardy by two aggrieved girls who have been abandoned and by waiters who have not been paid. The farcical situations are obvious, but the film survives through the ability of Laurel and Hardy. Millions.-Otto Forbes (Mr. Gordon Harker) is the owner of them, and a very self-satisfied and complacent owner he is, and not very sure in his aitches, but very sure in his handling of the clove market, which he sets out to corner. Cornering cloves is, appa- rently, easy to Otto-especially with a bogus cable to help him-and what with this corner- ing of cloves, looking after his son (Mr. Richard Hearne), who pretends to be a musician when he is not one, and quarrelling with that domineering aristocrat. Sir Charles Rimmer (Mr. Frank Pettingell), Otto is a btisy man. It is all slight and ordinary, but Mr. Harker has a way of building personality into the most conventional of farcical figures, and he persuades his audience that dealers in cloves had better mind their " p's " and " q's " when Otto is on the job. What he owed to that cable, and not to business acumen, no man of Otto's mentality would admit. PARAMOUNT - Without Orders.-Mr. James Cagney, as the conceited and individualistic pilot, and Mr. Pat O'Brien, as the sober one with a stern sense of duty, have appeared bn the screen in more than one film of the air, and now Mr. Winton Haworth and Mr. Robert Armstrong follow in their footsteps. The film, if for no other reasons, deserves a kind of rueful admiration for the way it obstinately refuses to deviate one inch from the tradition of its kind-it is, as it were, a " die-hard " of the " die-hards." Here is Mr. Haworth, as the boastful pilot, drinking his drinks and making love to girls within a few minutes of meeting them, and here is Mr. Armstrong, as the dutiful pilot, playing to the letter of the pilot's law and earning more kicks than half- pence in the process. There is, too, Miss Sally Eilers, as the girl who first belongs to Mr. Armstrong, is " pinched " by Mr. Haworth- the word is the proper one for his character- istically unscrupulous methods-and then brought to her senses by an exhibition of cowardice on the part of the boastful pilot and some typically level-headed work by the conscientious one. It is efficiently directed and efficiently acted, and that is all there is to say about it. NEW FILMS IN LONDON "SABOTAGE"
