Cinema: The New Pictures Aug. 11, 1930

The Law of the Siberian Taiga (Amkino). Because its scene is one of the world’s wildest frontiers and its direction straightforward and vital in the Russian manner, this ought to be important. It fails because, as usual, the makers have loaded on a dismal weight of propaganda. Hero is Kevebel Kima, a long haired, slant-eyed native of that swamp-land past the Siberian frontiers called Taiga. The theme is the conflict between the native’s devotion to his tribal law, which stipulates that possession is a sacred right of the possessor, and the Soviet dicta that possession is the right of the neediest. Less stylized and re-lieved of its propaganda content, the feud between Kima and a rich local fur trader might have been a great story. In its present form it is interesting principally because it was made in the Taiga. Good shots: slow thinking Kima consulting with the Soviet officials; his fight in the snow with the treacherous trader.

Good Intentions (Fox). This preposterous fable about gunmen in silk hats is good entertainment, although the characters, including Edmund Lowe as the gunmau chief, are stencils. The story is the one about the society Robin Hood who falls in love with a nice girl and keeps appointments with her between bank robberies. Few will accept as verity the huge town mansion of the young and naif hoodlum, or his devoted butler, or the robbery of the bank whose president is kidnaped at church by gunmen dressed like ushers, or Lowe’s stubborn march upstairs to death in a dark room. But none of its unlikelihoods impair the plot. So finely realized in Good Intentions are handsome photography and acting and directing that the familiar fictions are almost good again. Best shot: a crook who has just come out of Sing Sing walking and talking in his sleep.

Edmund Lowe was captain and first-baseman of a Santa Clara University baseball team which included Artie Schaeffer, Harry Wolters, Benny Kauff, all later big leaguers. He graduated from Santa Clara at 18, became a Master of Arts and member of the faculty at 19. College dra-matics had made him interested in acting and after a part in The Brat with a Los Angeles stock company he went to Manhattan, stayed there six years playing leads on Broadway. On his big ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains he breeds hounds and recently burbanked a new vegetable, a combination of green pepper and tomato which his wife, Lilyan Tash-man, named “topepo.” He plays good golf, dislikes radio, is fond of wearing yellow gloves, goes to church every Sunday. His best part was the tough top-sergeant in What Price Glory. Other pictures: The Silent Command, The Fool, The Cock Eyed World, Through Different Eyes.

The Sap from Syracuse (Paramount). One of the stock laughs in a piece of this kind comes when the hero, trying to explain to his girl that he is not really a famed mining engineer traveling incognito but just a country boy in his first golf trousers, is always interrupted and has to keep his secret. Jack Oakie does not depend on stock laughs. He makes them bearable but is really funny only when he improvises. The picture, most of which takes place on a steamer going to Macedonia, lacks the continuous suggestion of laughter that first-rate comedy possesses, but it makes up for dull stretches by moments of hilarity. Typical line: Oakie’s contention that snails can beat whippets racing up the side of a house.