(2 of 2)
This film about acrobats is devised entirely for one episode
which occupies a tenth of a second and takes place
on a trapeze, half way to heaven.
The key of the episode is a mechanical trick. Few pictures
constructed on such a formula
have been successful, but in Half Way to Heaven
the mechanical trick is original,
credible. The episode hinging on it is strenuously exciting. An
acrobat climbing up his wire ladder in a tent show to do a double
somersault with his head in a sack, knows that the colleague who is
to catch him would heartily like to see him dead. Somehow as he whirls,
blindfold, away from his trapeze, with no net below, he has to find a
way to keep the other chap from dropping him. Deft adaptation and
direction by George Abbott make the little story pleasant up to this
point, and the tenth-of-a-second shot of what the acrobat does next
welds it into drama.
Its drawbacks are Buddy Rogers' continuous ingenuousness,
occasional flat lines,
overacting by the "bit" characters, and the fact that its
central situation is frankly
appropriated from the great German film Variety. A good shot: pretty,
wiry Jean Arthur in a silk afternoon gown doing a stunt on the trapeze.
South Sea Rose (Fox).
As a French girl brought up in the South Seas and taken to New England
by a skipper
who marries her for her money, Lenore
Ulric talks the same baby gutturals she used a couple of weeks ago in
Frozen Justice, but the meaning of her husky drawling voice does not
depend on words and is the same in any language. The story is an
aimless, overkeyed triangle. Best shot: a simple-minded jazzbo having
a fit when checked in his efforts to get near the South Sea Rose.
