Cinema: The New Pictures: Nov. 13, 1939

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The Private Lives of Elizabeth andEssex (Warner Bros.) demonstrates the wear & tear on royal nerves when an aging, amorous Queen falls in love with a vain, personable young nobleman whose head she must cut off if she wants to keep her throne. It also demonstrates that Cinemactor Errol Flynn is prettier than Cinemactress Bette Davis, but not such a good actor.

When the Earl of Essex returns from sinking the Spanish fleet, spitfiery, red-wigged Elizabeth rewards him with a majestic slap in front of the delighted court. It seems he should have brought back the Spanish bullion ships intact. In Ireland, where he gets himself sent, Essex is defeated when court enemies intercept his pleas for aid. He returns to start a little rebellion of his own. Though Elizabeth loves Essex, she loves her throne more, prudently chops off his head.

To make this ambitious tragedy, producers took Maxwell Anderson's Broadway success, Elizabeth the Queen, had scripters tack on a new beginning. Knowing she acts nothing so well as a neurotic tantrum, they cast Bette Davis as the Queen, pulchritudinous Errol Flynn as Essex. Director Michael Curtiz was retained to pile on the pageantry. The result is a sumptuously Technicolored spectacle with some lyrically lovely scenes (hawk-flying), some eerie ones (Irish bogs).

The main defect of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex is that it is not tragic. Until the very end, Elizabeth's insistence that Essex can save his head merely by sending back her ring makes the drama seem as unreal as a schoolgirl's tiff, the decapitation just a bit of a royal whimsey. Partly this is due to Author Anderson's original conception, partly to the neurotic bounce with which Cinemactress Davis scratches, claws, snarls and romps her way through the repetitious love scenes, mopes and moons through her my-manic depressions. For all her unerring aim with a goblet, the scene in which Bette Davis smashes mirrors because they reflect her homely makeup falls far short of the similar scene in Fire Over England which Flora Robson terminates with her baffled, weary: "I will have no more mirrors in any room of mine."

Otherwise, Bette Davis, except in her scenes with Francis Bacon, ably acted by Donald Crisp, dominates the picture as singlehandedly as Elizabeth dominated England. For though slow-smiling, boyish Errol Flynn in a pair of seven-league boots will flutter more hearts than the Queen's, dramatically he leaves the impression that, in chopping off his head, Elizabeth is performing one of the more sensible acts of her reign.

20,000 Men A Year (20th Century-Fox). Fainthearts who swoon on Ferris wheels and feel dizzy when an elevator drops should keep away from this power dive into the problems of training college boys to be airmen. With the nonchalance of a parachute jumper, the picture unfolds the suggestion that if 20,000 young aviators are to be trained yearly, there will be thrills for both students and instructors. 20,000 Men A Year shows most of the thrills.