Cinema: The New Pictures Dec. 23, 1929

The Sky Hawk (Fox). In the grey belly of a Zeppelin over London, bombers work quietly. Through the night drop the bombs, making fountains and spraying plants of fire in the narrow streets, shaking the theatre where a chorus dances and the bar rooms and restaurants where people are eating and drinking. A flower-woman runs out to the corner to see the danger better and a nobleman goes up to his roof for the same purpose. The raid in the fog, brilliantly photographed, is the justification of an unconvincing anecdote about a British aviator (John Garrick) and a waitress (Helen Chandler) in a camp canteen. Best shot: crowds in Whitechapel watching the fight in the air.

The melodramatic moil of cinema is a strange background for Helen Chandler. A fragile blonde, she gained stage fame as a wistful tragedienne (Hedwig in The Wild Duck; Ophelia in Hamlet; Marguerite in Faust}. Her story of her life:

“BORN FEB 1 1909 ATTENDED PROFESSIONAL CHILDREN’S SCHOOL WHEN YOUNG SENT TO BENNETTS BECAUSE SOME KIND WEALTHY LADIES THOUGHT I NEEDED FRESH AIR LIKE TO STUDY GREATEST AMBITION TO LIVE IN ITALY IN A COLD GARRET WRITE BAD VERSE AND DRINK YELLOW WINE WHEN I’M OLD WOULD RATHER TRAVEL A LOT DOING ODD JOBS THAN BE A DEPENDABLE INGENUE BUT I LOVE THE THEATRE ANYWHERE WON’T MAKE MUCH MONEY BUT MAYBE I’LL WRITE STOP THE UNIVERSE AROUND US A GRAND BOOK A FAREWELL TO ARMS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL NOVEL THINK THE MOTION PICTURE A GRAND MEDIUM FOR ART PRODUCING THE MOST COLOSSALLY MORONIC RESULTS STOP MY MOTHER AND FATHER FIGURED MOST SPECTACULARLY IN THIS STORY WHEN. . . .” (Prior to her birth).

Hunting Tigers in India (F. D. Wilson). Commander George Dyott who went to India with the Vernay-Faunthorpe expedition talks about his trip and shows you pictures of it. His record is a good travelog, wonderfully vivid compared to the lectures which, under the same title, have been delivered since time immemorial as a special treat in U. S. boarding schools on Saturday nights, but prosaic when measured against some of the animal scenes that have been artificially arranged in recent romances of wild countries. Some of Dyott’s facts are interesting. Indians never kill ordinary elephants, regarding them as almost sacred because of their capacity for work. They kill only rogue elephants, lonely, vindictive bulls who have become killers when driven out of their tribe by the hostility of tribal females. If an Indian kills a rhinoceros without permission, he is fined; if he kills another, he is executed. Best shot: the tiger finding that his enemies have surrounded him.

Half Way to Heaven (Paramount). 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.