Rhodes (Gaumont-British) is the latest in the current series of cinema biographies. Its subject is the great English nationalist, Cecil Rhodes, famed as unifier of South Africa, better known in the U. S. as founder of the Rhodes Scholarships. Though it is solely with the former that this British picture deals, the U. S. need feel no slight, for Walter Huston was taken to England to play the lead in an otherwise all-foreign cast.
Already a diamond tycoon at 20, Cecil Rhodes is given "six months to live" by a Dr. Jameson (Basil Sydney), who examines him in South Africa in 1873. Ten years later he is not only still alive but master of South African diamond mines. With the help of Dr. Jameson, now his best friend, he pushes on to fulfill his lifelong ideal—to unite South Africa, then the whole world, under the British Empire. His first step is to absorb Matabeleland, lush jungle nation ruled by King Lobengula. As Premier, he next tries to get Transvaal, ruled by the Boers, sole white rivals to English supremacy. Foiled by the stolid smugness of Boer President Oom Paul Kruger (Oscar Homolka), Rhodes allows himself to be persuaded into using force. The resulting fiasco of "Jameson's Raid" forces him to resign all his high positions, lose his virtual dictatorship. Unbowed by defeat, he admits the wrong, dies quietly just as the Boer War is bringing true the Union of South Africa he always sought.
One prime asset of Rhodes is its obvious sincerity and meticulous attention to fact. Another asset is its refusal to drag in that usual cinema qua non, a false romance. Yet these qualities, which make it good history, also make it a painfully pedestrian picture. Walter Huston has to boom out such lines as: "Napoleon tried to unite Europe and failed. I am trying to unite South Africa, and I will not fail."
King Lobengula is played by a genuine Matabele warrior named Ndanisa Kumalo. A huge, jovial black, brought to England for the production, he proved to be a superb actor. In history, Rhodes stole King Lobengula's country; in Rhodes, King Lobengula steals the show.
Klondike Annie (Paramount). Said the Hearst New York American last week: "The attention of the churches, the women's clubs, the various state censors, the state legislatures and the Congress of the United States is called to the fact that Mae West has produced another screen play which she wrote herself. . . ." Whether or not Klondike Annie is really worth the attention of Congressmen will depend on how familiar they are with earlier West efforts from which the current one differs only in detail. This time she is a San Francisco strumpet who knifes her Chinese paramour, slips on board an Alaska-bound freighter, enraptures its captain (Victor McLaglen), befriends a churchworker bound for Nome, usurps her identity when she dies, lands in Nome as Sister Annie Alden, enslaves a young territorial police officer (Philip Reed), renounces him rather than ruin his career, returns to San Francisco to face the music. As usual, the comedy depends mainly upon the incongruity between Mae West's up-to-date wisecracks and their fin de siècle background.