Winterset.

From Maxwell Anderson's play, "Winterset" has been made a film of most unusual merit, a film that has in it something far transcending mere entertainment, it has a quality of artistry, of dramatic power, that makes it a memorable, rare picture. It is the tale of a modern Hamlet, convincingly translated to our times by the use of the Sacco-Vanzetti case as the plot foundation.

When we were very young. Sacco and Canzetti, peaceable radicals, were convicted of a hold-up and murder. Flimsy circumstantial evidence and mob-hysteria condemned them. In "Winterset" so is it with Bartolomio Romagne, dreamer and idealist.

"Mio" Romanga grows up; possessed, like Hamlet, with a fierce desire for vengeance, for justice to his murdered father. Penniless and bitter, he comes to New York seeking Garth Esdras, an accomplice in the crime for which his father died, and the one man from whom he hopes to discover the truth. The "bright ironic gods" let him fall in love with Mirimne. Garth's sister, before he knows who she is.

His subsequent conflicting emotions make difficult acting, but Burgess Meredith shows himself capable of interpreting the most sensitive roles. Finer acting than that of Miriamne and Mio has never come to the screen.

The character pursue their separate ways, converging in the basement room where Garth Esdras, his father, and Miriamne live, for a climax that leave Mio triumphant but still in danger of his life. Trock Estrella, the man responsible for the sixteen-year-old crime, lies in ambush ready to silence such a menace to himself as Mio Romagne.

Mio and Miriamne outwit Estrella, in a sequence that leaves the audience silent and pensive. They move in a fatal and uneasy atmosphere, caught by the camera in scenes that are masterpieces, of excitement without sensationalism. of suspense without anticlimax.

"Winterset" deserves a place on anybody's list of truly great films.

—A.G.H.