Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 22, 1930

Big Boy (Warner). A new picture starring Al Jolsonlis known beforehand to be little save a skeletal frame upon which he may hang gags ancient and new, plug sentimental ballads, caper through dance steps and behave in the approved Jolson manner. Big Boy is a cinemized version of the musicomedy of the same name in which he appeared for the Shuberts five years ago, a hackneyed, outlandish tale of a proud Southern family staking all on the Kentucky Derby, blackmailers, a forged check, an errant son, a happy musicomedy ending. Big Boy is the horse on which Jolson as Gus, the maligned faithful Negro jockey ultimately rides to victory.

When young Master Jack Bedford lies about orders he has given Gus, Gus is discharged. As a waiter in a Louisville restaurant he overhears the plot against the Bedfords, foils the villains, returns to the Bedford stables in time to ride Big Boy to victory against a field of jockeys weighing pounds less than himself. Jolson in the plot is innocuous, often preposterous, unhampered by the story: singing, quipping, dancing, rolling his eyes and giving the Jolson public oldtime Jolson nonsense from the days before he got mixed up with Sonny Boy. That both Warner and Jolson know Jolson’s acting limitations is evidenced by two sequences. The first is a flashback to post Civil war days in which Jolson as Gus’s grandfather captures a villainous Southern fire-eater and, ahorse, rescues his beauteous young mistress, successfully burlesquing the ancient slave-master tradition. The second is the fade-out—the cast out of character formally grouped on a painted stage with orchestra below and Jolson with his face washed white expressing the wish that his cinema audience enjoyed themselves as much in sitting through the picture as he did in making it. Silliest shot: Jolson saying goodby to Big Boy after being discharged.

The Squealer (Columbia). Davey Lee who stepped from urchinhood to stardom with Al Jolson is the squealer. His gangster-chief father Charles Hart (Jack Holt) has just killed the leader of a rival gang and is hiding from the dead man’s cronies. Davey as Bunny does not know that he has told a mortal enemy the whereabouts of his father. To save her husband from certain death Mrs. Hart (Dorothy Revier) weepingly calls in the Law. Father Hart is caught in time by the police and sentenced to seven years for manslaughter. In prison the sore festers, he is convinced that his wife has rid herself of him in order to take up with Sheridan, his “best friend” (Matt Moore). Follows a prison break in which Hart escapes and returns to his home, vengeance-bent. As he enters he overhears his spouse retailing to Sheridan how she saved her husband from his enemies’ submachine guns. Remorse stings him and with an amazing lack of logic for such a hard man he walks from his home into the trap he has laid for Sheridan.

Storm Over Asia (Amkino). A Mongol hunter, mulcted out of a silver fox skin by a Russian fur tycoon, runs amok and flees for his life. In the mountains he encounters kinsmen embattled against the White army and joins them. He is captured, shot, left to die, then nursed back to life when an amulet which accident brought him convinces the White general that he is progeny of great Genghis Khan. The wily White general sets him up as a puppet ruler to insure peace amongst the surly Mongols, but the hunter, confused and bewildered at first, suddenly discerns his enemies’ intentions, goes Mongol. The picture closes with the “storm” (1918 Red revolt against Tsarism) gathering fury over the wild plains of Central Asia.

In this, as in all Soviet post-revolution cinemas, propaganda is paramount, though more subtle. It is a one-actor show as opposed to the mass-action of Potemkin, Ten Days that Shook the World, Old and New with the people’s awakening centred in the phlegmatic, stupid, finally violent figure of the Mongol hunter. Valery Inkizhinov, a Mongol by blood, is a capable tool of Director Vsevolod Pudovkin in showing forth the brutal elementalism of his race through the medium of the duped Asiatic. Typical shots: Inkizhinov wrecking the general’s headquarters; the drooling baby Lama at the Festival of the Masks gurgling merrily as a monk inducts his predecessor’s soul into his flesh; the symbolism of the growing “storm” sweeping the Whites before it like tumbleweeds.

The Sea God (Paramount). Though fantastic and melodramatic, The Sea God has the merit of an original idea. “Pink” Barker and one Schultz, rival sea captains of the south seas, wager their ships on the outcome of a race. Daisy, in love with Barker but unwilling to show it until he mends his shiftless ways, stows away with him. Barker’s craft is far ahead until he turns back to rescue a demented derelict in an open boat. The derelict dies after telling of a great pearl bed off a nearby island. Because of the rescue Barker loses the race and his ship. But with the pearls the dying man gave him he buys back the boat and sets out for the pearl-island. Schultz hears of it and follows. While Barker is on the ocean-floor investigating, cannibals attack his ship. Sensing that something is amiss Barker cuts the connecting lines on his diving suit and with commendable sureness of foot and direction walks to shore. He wanders about dazed, unable to get his suit off, and eventually stumbles upon the cannibals who are about to make a meal of Daisy and his ship’s mate. The cannibals think a god from the ocean-depths is standing before them. All ends merrily enough when Schultz meets a bloody death and Barker sails for home with Daisy and a fortune.

The Sea God is fair entertainment. Richard Arlen as “Pink” Barker turns his handsome profile often and to good advantage towards the camera. Robert Gleckler is adequate as Rogue Schultz. Fay Wray as Daisy is a bit too literate for a waif reared on an island where cultural advantages were few. Best shot: Diver Arlen meeting the cannibals.

Follow Thru (Paramount). Though googoo-eyed Charles (“Buddy”) Rogers and comely Nancy Carroll are billed as stars in this technicolor facsimile of last year’s popular golfing musicomedy, they do little but lend their decorative presence. They posture in love scenes, sing with thin voices, dance when it is their turn. Most of all they kiss. Jack Haley does what he can as the millionaire misogynist who lapses into mild fits before female loveliness in lingerie. Thelma Todd, Zelma O’Neal and Eugene Pallette are helpful. Laurence Schwab, half of the Schwab & Mandel firm that produced the stage Follow Thru, directed the cinema version. That he chose to retain such once justly popular but now outworn songs as “Button Up Your Overcoat,” “I Want to Be Bad,” speaks little for his originality. Technicolor, as usual, blurs and makes a poor picture even worse. Most monotonous shot: Miss Carroll in the arms of Hero Rogers.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs (Warner). Laid in the light operatic England of 1793 when a woman’s virtue was her most precious jewel and men lived by what they called a “code of honor,” Sweet Kitty Bellairs has all the saccharinity that its title promises. In it are singing highwaymen, bewigged and powdered noblemen, tightly corseted court ladies, all steeped in a dated atmosphere of lavender and old lace. Kitty’s polite, highly moral love affairs motivate what small story there is. Through a welter of songs into which the principals break at short intervals she at length decides on a lord instead of a highwayman. The cast, which includes Claudia Dell, Ernest Torrence, Walter Pidgeon, Perry Askam, Lionel Belmore and June Collyer, enjoy themselves thoroughly, are never called upon for much histrionic effort. The cinema is from David Belasco’s play of the same name.