Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 29, 1930

Der Tiger Von Berlin (UFA). Disstinctly the most competent European talkie presented in the U. S. to date, Der Tiger Von Berlin is a murder mystery with German dialog and a German cast. It concerns the efforts of the Berlin police to get hold of a killer, known as the Tiger, who shoots his victims through the forehead before robbing them. Suspense gathers force by concentration; it is not distributed loosely among many characters, but narrowed quickly to two and still so deftly juggled that the ending is a surprise. There are only two murders in the course of the action and one of them takes place in full view of the audience without yielding any clue to the perpetrator. Der Tiger Von Berlin is further distinguished by a blonde young woman named Charlotte Susa who is as good looking and able as the best U. S. stars. Best shot: a wrestler being thrown by jujitsu. The Last of the Duanes (Fox). Once a movie was one of two things— pie-throwing or western. Properly and naturally cinematic, westerns have never fallen into disrepute. Although the great companies produced them only occasionally, in the manner of revivals, small independents have never stopped making them for rural consumption. This Zane Grey western was a silent, and a good one. With sound added and such photography as few westerns have had, it has the proper ingredients—the chase on horseback, pearl-handled revolvers, the kidnaped girl, the cattle-stealer. It lacks continuity but is worth the while of anyone who regrets that picture companies have turned from the original sources of their inspiration. Best part: Myrna Loy as the jealous wife of an amorous cowman.

Outward Bound (Warner). This is a reproduction of that allegory, presented six years ago on the Manhattan stage, in which a group of people find themselves on shipboard, though none of them can say how they came to be there or where they are going. Slowly the realization comes to them that they have died, that their destination is eternity. It is an unusual picture because it contains none of the elements commonly accepted as having picture appeal. A dowager, a charwoman, a financier, a drunkard and a pair of unhappy lovers are capably presented by a cast that includes Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Helen Chandler, Leslie Howard. When the interest weakens it is not the fault of the picturemakers but of the writing. Playwright Sutton Vane was not completely successful in creating the terror and grandeur that his theme demanded, but his effort was courageous, moving, sincere, and so is Warner’s reflection of it. Best shot: Leslie Howard, as a neurotic, supersensitive inebriate, beginning to understand what sort of voyage he is making.

On Your Back (Fox). Unlike most dramas of mother-love, this has a legitimate theme and an interesting background. The theme is an exposition of how the plans an ambitious parent makes for her son are rejected because they do not coincide with the way he has mapped out his own life. The background, decoratively handled, is a dressmaking business built up by Mother Irene Rich. Her specialty is giving show girls clothes on credit, knowing they will wheedle the money out of their sweethearts. Her plans for her son go to seed when he falls in love with a girl who is one of the establishment’s best paying customers. On Your Back might have been much better. It is not tightly constructed: often important sequences are skimped and irrelevant ones emphasized, but in spite of its faults it is superior to the average program film. Best shot: a blonde switchboard operator going through a few moments of her day’s routine.

The Call of the Flesh (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). A few years ago this kind of story was handled in pictures with a mawkish solemnity that made it unbearable. It is built around a laugh-clown-laugh sequence in which a young Spanish singer, his heart broken when his sweetheart is taken away from him, outdoes himself as Canio in Pagliacci. Yet so skillful are detail, dialog, direction that the spectator is never concerned with the values of the plot as realism. Modern sound technique has transformed the old romantic design into a highly successful and credible operetta. Novarro sings Spanish folk songs, English foxtrots, Italian opera. He has one of those brilliantly cultivated concert tenors which are far more effective than operatic voices for the microphone. Little Dorothy Jordan plays opposite him. Cutting would have done this picture good, as many of the sequences, retained for their sentimental import, are merely tedious, and the whole thing is too long. Good shots: what the girl from the convent says when Novarro asks her if she would like to come home with him; harmonic parallelogram of nuns singing mass; the young singer, his old teacher,and their fat landlady singing a trio in a Madrid rooming house.

When Ramon Novarro starred in silent pictures, the cultivation of his voice was merely a hobby, but one which interested him more than the work for which he was paid. Giving recitals for friends in his private theatre and singing every Sunday in the little Catholic church in Los Angeles to which he goes with his family, were not enough. When he made his last contract with M-G-M he stipulated that a certain amount of his time should be his own so that he could make concert tours. Several years ago he tried opera with a Berlin company. It is not likely that Novarro’s ambition to become an opera star will ever be realized unless the cinema itself evolves its own form of grand opera. His voice, for all its beauty, is small—not an opera voice. Yet such a singer as Novarro would be far less absurd on a grand opera stage than the rotund divas and stout heroes of grand opera would be before the camera. The effectiveness of the pastel-tinted act from Pagliacci in The Call of the Flesh makes it seem likely that the cinema will have its opera and that it will bring into existence a new type of opera star—men and women who may lack the volume or tone necessary in true operatic amphitheatres, but who will have the good looks which cinema audiences, perhaps rightfully, demand. Other famed singers who have been successful in more or less serious vocal efforts for the sound-camera: John McCormack (Song of My Heart), a failure on the grand opera stage but a great concert attraction; Lawrence Tibbett (Rogue Song) a capable operatic baritone.