Cinema: The New Pictures: Jun. 5, 1939

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The Mikado (Gilbert & Sullivan Films). The year 1939 is the biggest season Gilbert & Sullivan ever had. Hot on the heels of Broadway's three Mikados—one hallmarked, one half-swing and one pure Harlem—comes the first Mikado in cinema. Made in England's Pinewood Studios last year by Director Victor Schertzinger and a quorum of first-string members of London's famed D'Oyly1"Carte Company, the screen version of the world's most famed operetta is a full-length, Technicolor facsimile of the original.

The Schertzinger Mikado, adapted by Conductor Geoffrey Toye, contains no word that Gilbert, no note that Sullivan, did not write. A few omissions include the duet between Katisha and Ko-Ko, There is beauty in the bellow of the blast and Ko-Ko's song I've got a little list. Sets are far handsomer than any ever seen on the Savoyard stage. Sound recording is approximately perfect. On close inspection, cinemaddicts will note that the Mikado's story conforms strictly to Boy-Meets-Girl pattern; and that Gilbert & Sullivan have not yet been topped by Tin Pan Alley.

Director Victor Schertzinger has long held that the cinema is a better medium for opera than the stage. Composer of the music for The Love Parade (1929), Schertzinger started his campaign to bring opera to the screen when he had Grace Moore trill in One Night of Love, thus setting the fashion for innumerable musical films. Since all works of Gilbert & Sullivan (except The Pirates of Penzance) are in the public domain in the U. S., he could easily have produced The Mikado in Hollywood without paying royalties to the D'Oyly Carte Company, which owns the English rights. Instead, he went abroad to collaborate with Producer Toye, who got the D'Oyly Carte's wholehearted cooperation. The Mikado cost about $1,000,000. Newcomers to Gilbert & Sullivan in its cast are pretty little Jean Colin (Yum-Yum) and Kenny Baker (Nanki-Poo), U. S. radio singer imported for the part. Of Baker the unmollified London Times remarked: "He seems to have learnt English in some place nearer to Japan than London. . . ."

Stolen Life (Orion Productions-Paramount release). Elisabeth Bergner is a tiny, talented Viennese Jewess of 38, of whom German critics were once proud. For five years she has been making movies in English without strongly impressing U. S. audiences. Her English film debut in Catherine the Great was unfortunately shadowed in the U. S. by Marlene Dietrich's ballyhooed The Scarlet Empress, and her most successful picture, Escape Me Never (in which she also played her only Broadway role), was too easy for her to prove much. In Stolen Life, Actress Bergner gets. and takes, her first real chance to show that the German critics used to be right.

Martina and Sylvina Lawrence, twin daughters of an English diplomat (Wilfrid Lawson), can be told apart only when they part their hair on different sides. Within, frivolous, selfish Sylvina and gentle Martina are as different as black & white. When Martina falls in love with a young Englishman (Michael Redgrave) whom she encounters on an alp, Sylvina steps in, nabs him. A sailing spill drowns Sylvina, leaves Martina in possession of her sister's wedding ring, husband, lover, and life—and Actress Bergner with a psychological problem worthy of her steel.