Cinema: The New Pictures Oct. 20, 1930

Atlantic (Elstree). Although Director E. A. Du Pont (who made Variety) directed this, it suffers from the flowery dialog and annoying deliberation peculiar to most British films. Like The Deluge, Journey’s End and Submarine, it shows how a group of people behave when they are facing death. This time the setting is a trans-Atlantic liner which sinks after hitting an iceberg. If the producers had used some of the stories that have been current for two decades about the crash of the Titanic, or even if they had used the Titanic’s passenger list as a basis for their cast, results would have been better. Unfortunately the tremendous and simple design of the accident to the boat has been traced through a set of theatrical stencils, conventionally acted. There are two drunkards, a priest, a novelist, a pair of honeymooners, a valet. None of them are just right. Good shots have been taken of men killed by officers while they struggle to get into the lifeboats, of hysterical women waiting their turn, of the water rising on the floor of the saloon. The rest of it has the unmistakable atmosphere of a picture made in a studio. A Lady Surrenders (Paramount). There is nothing original about this domestic triangle—not even the line about the Philadelphia bed manufacturer whose slogan is that he stands behind every bed he sells.

A Lady Surrenders is based on John Erskine’s novel, Sincerity. It is a serious and over-articulate effort that is made tolerable only by the skill of an excellent cast. Its climax consists in Conrad Nagel’s discovery that since his wife did not go through with the divorce she promised for a certain date, he has become a bigamist in marrying his sweetheart, Genevieve Tobin. Best shot—Miss Tobin explaining how she was knocked down by the taxi.

Madam Satan (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This is the most interesting picture of the week because it revives a tradition that was once very important to the business.

Cecil Blount De Mille originated this tradition—creating scenes and people that could never be found in life. Fantastic sirens, magical ballrooms whose floors, glittering like yellow ice, were sooner or later covered with confetti and colored streamers, impossible situations madefascinating for the camera by golden bathtubs and huge canopied beds are the terms in which Cineman De Mille has always worked. Now he Begins with a shot of a birdbath and finishes with passengers parachuting out of a giant dirigible that is struck by lightning. He stages his inevitable masked ball on board the airship, and it is at this party that Kay Johnson, dressed as a female devil, fascinates Reginald Denny, who does not at firstperceive that she is his own wife. Crazy as they are, the air scenes are directed with fine skill. Best shot—the mechanical dance number in which Theodore Kosloff portrays Electricity. Cecil Blount De Mille was one of the partners of the original Lasky corporation (1912). Less alive than his associates to the business possibilities of the cinema, he was more concerned than they were with its opportunities as a medium for new dramatic expressions. Vain, shrewd, assertive, careless with money, he somehow became accepted as a national, even a universal type of film director. His house in Culver City is a replica of Mount Vernon and his desk is like the one in the presidential study at the White House. He has a Kleig light mounted under his desk which he sometimes throws into the faces of his visitors. He has a bearskin rug between the door and his desk so that people may trip on it coming in. “I have punctured many a balloon with that rug,” says he. A suite of rooms in his house is decorated like the interior of a yacht. Three weeks ago, getting into a dory from the landing-step of his real yacht Seaward, he broke his ankle. Says he: “The greatest luxury I have is the ability to dress in clean clothes every day from the skin out, complete.”

Liliom (Fox). One trouble with this filming of Ferenc Molnars play is that Charles Farrell is miscast in the title role. Liliom is supposed to be a swaggering, im pulsive Hungarian bully who beats up women but lacks nerve enough to be a good thief. Farrell remains a genteel U. S. boy with a highschool accent and a sort of forced, unnatural animation. His mus tache and old clothes detract from his good looks but fail to put him in character. Director Frank Borzage has sustained the light, sentimental parable in a mood of fantasy proper to his material. It is a story about a coward who, after a prosaic love-affair and a miserable death, wants to come back to earth to see his child. Its principal quality is tragic fantasy and this is a quality which has seldom proved to be of use in the film industry. Best shot — passengers eating in the dining car of a Hungarian train.