Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 1, 1930

Romance (Metro -Goldwyn -Mayer). Here is Greta Garbo postured superbly against the brownstone elegance of Manhattan 30 years ago—Garbo in Watteau hats and waisted dresses which perfectly become both her figure and the gracefully nostalgic story of a forfeited love. It is Edward Sheldon’s old play in which Doris Keane starred for so long on the stage, an adaptation arranged in flashbacks, directed by Clarence Brown, with Lewis Stone as the middle-aged lover to whom Garbo returns after an interlude with a clergyman. For some reason the script makes her an Italian soprano. This detail, superficial, but salient in the plot, is the only thing in the picture that is silly. The simple expedient of altering the tag of the opera-singer to “Swedish Contralto” would have removed the skepticism which must afflict audiences through their realization that the bell-like head-tones heard issuing from a ballroom could not possibly be produced by Garbo’s deep voice. It is a voice fascinating for its monotony which, though natural to Garbo, seems deliberately assumed to sustain the intense mood of the story. She loves the clergyman but gives him up because she feels that it would be absurd to marry him. Garbo has been in better stories but none that suited better her disturbing, almost legendary fascination. Her acting confirms her position as the most important woman in the world’s cinema. Gavin Gordon does well enough as the clerical hero. Best sequences: the love affair that begins in a ballroom and develops in a sleighride. Old English (Warner). Although John Galsworthy rewrote his famous short story for presentation on the stage, it was never a play in the strict terms of dramatic construction, but rather the concluding act of the unwritten play that was the previous life of Galsworthy’s central character. Old English is at once a portrait and the epilog to a portrait; it is steeped in a mood of finality which would give it dignity even if it were less thoughtfully written. When George Arliss did it on the stage a few critics ventured with their praise the criticism that he seemed too frail and sharpened a man to represent perfectly that lusty Sylvanus Heythorp who in his extreme old age perpetrated a shady transaction to insure the prosperity of his illegitimate family and who died after an eight-course dinner accompanied by a bottle of champagne, three glasses of port, some vintage brandy. The fact that critics could question the obvious reality of a living man and a skilful actor as against an imagined character proves the vitality of the portrait; certainly no one who goes to the picture without some preconceived ideas about Heythorp could find any fault with Arliss’ old-masterly performance. A competent cast gives him all the support he needs, which is not much. Best shot: the death scene after Heythorp’s puritanical legitimate daughter has taken the bottle of brandy away from him and put it just out of reach.

Anybody’s Woman (Paramount). So formidable are the combined talents of Clive Brook and Ruth Chatterton that after seeing them work one is inclined to feel that the blame for this picture’s faults rests with Directrix Dorothy Arzner. There are times when the story of the rich lawyer who, while drunk, marries an ex-burlesque girl, becomes static and at such times the two people who head the cast are able, uninterrupted by mechanics, to give it depth and life. Soon, however, the dramatic conflict involved in the woman’s inability to adjust herself to her new life is replaced by a prosaic and complicated triangle. In spite of occasional effectiveness and consistently brilliant acting. Anybody’s Woman is distinguished principally by its unfulfilled possibilities, among which are the scenes in which: the burlesque girl goes “on the wagon” to redeem her fashionable, drunken husband; the servants threaten to leave because they are embarrassed by the low social status of their mistress; the wife forcibly makes her husband take a bath.

Dancing Sweeties (Warner). This is mostly a record of a slow waltz in a dancehall, an agreeably sentimental tune called “The Kiss Waltz.” The background is Hoffman’s Parisian Dance Hall and the central situation is a marriage joining two dancing partners who coveted the apartment offered as a prize to any couple married on the floor. The picture is only a routine talkie filler. Grant Withers and Sue Carol have the leads. Best sequence: what happens when the young husband brings home a new trophy from a dance contest.