Cinema: The New Pictures: Oct. 7, 1935

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Nino Martini is 29, 5 ft. 8 in., weighs 152, has no hobbies, takes no exercise, eats heavily. He was born in Verona, Italy. His father was custodian of the alleged tomb of Romeo & Juliet. Martini sang in the choir of San Fermo Maggiore, practiced weekdays at the tomb. Giovanni Zenatello, oldtime tenor, heard him, taught him till La Scala at Milan arranged his debut in I Puritani which was revived for Martini. For the first time in 90 years the aria Credea si Miserere was sung in its original key of D flat. Usually it is given a half tone lower so that the tenor has only to reach high E. Martini took the F above high C. He had made a Paris date on tour in 1928 when Jesse Lasky, Paramount's vice president in charge of production, heard him, took him to the U. S. where Martini made some shorts for short pay and sang a song in Paramount on Parade. Lasky fired him. Martini went back to Italy, sang opera until the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company hired him as a leading tenor, became famed singing on a Columbia Broadcasting hour. Meanwhile Lasky had left Paramount. As an associated producer at Fox, his future seemed as dubious as Martini's in 1928. Martini had signed to make a picture for another company, canceled his contract when he heard Lasky wanted him. A hard-boiled Hollywood audience cheered themselves hoarse at the preview.

Maria Chapdelaine (France-Film). The habitants of Quebec, still pioneers after 300 years in the Canadian wilderness, still speaking a French that would be more easily understood by 16th Century than by contemporary Parisians, are immortalized both by their own qualities and by the writings of Author Louis Hemon. This picture, an adaptation of his most famed novel, reflects brilliantly the qualities which therein made, of a story so simple that it was at once an epic and an anecdote, a minor masterpiece.

Maria Chapdelaine, living with her famly on the edge of the forest, miles from the tiny village of Peribonka, falls in love with the trapper François Paradis. On Christmas Eve, in a blizzard so terrific that ven Maria's mother does not dare go to midnight mass, François starts from a far-away lumber camp for her house. He never gets there. On New Year's morning, Maria sees his body brought into the village on a dogsled. Dazed by this tragedy, she resumes the quiet, terrifying routine which is winter life in northern Quebec. Her mother dies. Her father reproaches himself for having made his wife spend her life so far from the village whose gayety she had loved. A boyhood friend who has left the land to live in the city comes back to ask Maria to marry him. The woodcutter. Eutrope Gagnon, does so also. The village priest preaches a stern sermon. Maria promises the woodcutter she will marry him in the spring and stays on in the wilderness.