1940 Movie Till We Meet Again
THE SCREEN; ''Til We Meet Again,' With Merle Oberon, O'Brien, Brent, Opens at Strand--3 New Foreign Films
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April 20, 1940
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The psychology of the unhappy ending has seldom been used to better advantage than it is by Warner Brothers in the sad romanza entitled "'Til We Meet Again" at the Strand. This psychology is quite simply: the unhappy ending has a bad box-office reputation, but when you mix it with an obvious plot, a plot which, if possible, has been successfully used at least once before, and stud the mixture with star reputations, some one, just barely possibly, might mistake the result for art. It may be that quite a number of people, touched by the synthetic tragedy of it, will mistake "'Til We Meet Again" for art, but the fact remains that it is just a very sad remake of "One Way Passage" which, in 1932, was described in this newspaper as "uncouth, brusque and implausible . . . but quite satisfactory entertainment."Those eight-year-old phrases hold surprisingly true today, though we must repeat that the current exhibit is a remake of that 1932 film, and remakes are notoriously less satisfactory as entertainment than originals. In all the vast history of motion picture production there is not one single instance of a remake which was better than its parent production, and history has not been changed in the present case. We hope this fact has been made sufficiently clear, for, once it has been disposed of, we may add that "'Til We Meet Again" may still very well strike many persons as, if not "quite" satisfactory, at any rate as fairly satisfactory entertainment. The people have been changed from Kay Francis and William Powell to Merle Oberon and George Brent, but the theme is still that of two desperate doomed people who meet, fall in love, taste happiness briefly on a trans-Pacific voyage and pass on to their tragically separate dooms.The most amusing passenger, a card sharp and thief answering to the generally unconvincing description of Frank McHugh, was also a character on the original voyage, under the name of Skippy instead of Achilles. But, since the name he inveterately applies to himself in conversation is Rockingham T. Rockingham, the other two names were probaly aliases also. New and on the whole happy additions to the passenger list are Pat O'Brien as the sternly dutiful detective, Geraldine Fitzgerald as an exuberant tourist, Binnie Barnes as a shady character known as the Countess, and Eric Blore as a wealthy Britisher. The tragedy (for the benefit of those who don't remember) is that the handsome Mr. Brent was on his way back to the States to pay the supreme penalty at San Quentin, while Miss Oberon suffered from an incurable cardiac condition. The way it is worked out this time, "implausible" would seem to be an understatement.At the 86th St. Garden TheatreThe always attractive shadow of little Luise Ullrich, one of Austria's most capable actresses, has chased those of the Olympic Games athletes from the screen of the Eighty-sixth Street Garden Theatre after their six-week stay. But Luise, in "Schatten der Vergangenheit" (Shadows of the Past), works almost as hard as they did.Playing the double role of twin sisters, one of whom is "the toast of Vienna" while the other is doing a four-year stretch for a crime of which she is innocent, Miss Ullrich carries the burden of making this fairly familiar theme interesting once again. With some help from Gustav Diesel, as a district attorney in love with the "lucky" twin, who is drowned early in the story, and Oscar Sima and Anton Pointer as a pair of crooks, she succeeds.Werner Hochbaum directed the picture for the Danubia Company. It has English superimposed titles.At the 48th Street TheatreIn switching from Spanish to Swedish films the Forty-eighth Street Theatre presents us with a delightful comedy and with a new and charming Scandinavian actress.She is pretty Sonja Wigert, Norwegian by birth but mostly Swedish in her stage and screen activities. In "Hennes Lilla Majestät" (Her Little Majesty), a Terra production directed by S. Bauman, Fröken Wigert is the chic and spoiled daughter of an Oslo shipping magnate won over to the simple life and the idea of being of some use to her fellow-men by the example of a country pastor (Anders Henrikson) in Sweden.This hardly is an original theme, but the actors, including Gösta Cederlund as a rural doctor, play their roles so naturally and the incidents are so human in every way (except, perhaps, the extreme reticence of the preacher in the face of such sweet temptation) that the audience is kept entertained from start to finish. And the moral is not to be sneezed at. There are English titles.At the 86th Street CasinoKarl Felix, Prince zu Schwarzenberg, head of the reactionary Austrian Government, who, with the assistance of his ferocious brother-in-law, Prince Windischgraetz, and Russian troops, crushed the Hungarian revolution led by Louis Kossuth in 1849, gets a heavy coat of whitewash in "Maria Ilona," the new period picture at the Eighty-sixth Street Casino Theatre.As acted by the popular Willy Birgel, the Prince, partly out of love for Hungarian-born Ilona (Paula Wessely) and partly from a sense of justice, is willing to give the Magyars a pretty fair deal. The spiritual conflict between nationalism and natural affection is exploited to the full under the smooth direction of Geza von Bolvary.The scenes of court gayety in Vienna are strikingly contrasted with the rude camp of Kossuth and stirring battles. Among the excellent players representing the historical characters of the time in this Terra production are Paul Hoerbiger, Otto Wernicke, Carl Guenther, Hermann Brix, Paul Hubschmid and Hedwig Bleibtreu.
'TIL WE MEET AGAIN—Screen play by Warren Duff; based on a story by Robert Lord; directed by Edmund Goulding; produced by Hal B. Wallis for Warner Brothers. At the Strand.Joan Ames . . . . . Merle OberonDan Hardesty . . . . . George BrentSteve Burke . . . . . Pat O'BrienBonny Coburn . . . . . Geraldine FitzgeraldCountess Capricci . . . . . Binnie BarnesAchilles . . . . . Frank McHughSir Harold . . . . . Eric BloreJimmy Coburn . . . . . George ReevesHerb McGillis . . . . . Victor KilianCaptain Stoddard . . . . . Cy KendallMrs. Hester . . . . . Marjorie GatesonDr. Cameron . . . . . Henry O'NeillAssistant Purser . . . . . Frank WilcoxTommy . . . . . Herbert AndersonBartender . . . . . Frank OrthPoliceman . . . . . Chester Gan
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