Cinema: The New Pictures: Mar. 6, 1933

Rome Express (Gaumont-British Pictures Corp.). You can readily guess what kindsof travelers are to be found in this picture: a picture thief (Conrad Veidt), his accomplice (Hugh Williams), a cinemactress (Esther Ralston), a businessman eloping with his partner’s wife (Joan Barry), a fuzzy British tourist with a regurgitative chuckle (Gordon Harker), a U. S. millionaire traveling with his secretary, a chief of police, a nervous spinster.The picture thief’s accomplice renews an old romance with the cinemactress while the picture thief is murdering a timid little rascal for stealing a Van Dyck which, through a confusion of briefcases,finds its way into the compartment of the U. S. millionaire. The businessman is suspected of the murder, cleared about the time the train reaches Rome.

It is high time that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences adopted a Baum’s Law to punish, with progressive severity, any further thefts of Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel formula. Aside from this defect, Rome Express, by far the most successful effort yet imported from England,is a more than passable program picture. Conrad Veidt is one of the dankest villains ever to infest a wagonlit; Director Walter Forde gives you the feeling of a train, not with two reels of atmosphereshots like the ones Josef von Sternberg used in Shanghai Express but with a sharp eye for dramatic touches. Good shot: the hand of a corpse hanging out of a berth, swinging as the train rocks.

Our Betters (RKO) is a well photographed version of Somerset Maugham’s acrid comedy about U. S. parvenues in London society. Less a play than a gallery of portraits, it has the merit of showing its subjects in action: Lady Grayston (Constance Bennett), an heiress married to a penniless peer for his title, showing off with loud clothes and reconditioned epigrams; an aging duchess (Violet Kemble-Cooper), jealous of her gigolo (Gilbert Roland) who is making love to Lady Grayston; Thornton Clay (Grant Mitchell), a pee-wee snob trying to behave like a patrician; a U. S. Babbitt (Minor Watson) who gives Lady Grayston checks and stubbornly calls her “girlie”; two as yet undegenerate Americans, Lady Grayton’s young sister Bessie and an admirer who has followed her to London. The crisis that brings them all into violent collision comes when, at one of Lady Grayston’s weekends, Bessie catches a glimpse of Lady Grayston and the Duchess’s gigolo misbehaving in a teahouse. Presently, artfully prompted by Lady Grayston, Author Maugham’s people slip back into their old poses, forget that anything has happened.

The effect of Lady Grayston’s misconduct upon her young sister may seem less important dramatic material now than it did when Our Betters was performed on Broadway in 1917, but the conversation adapted for the screen by Jane Murfin and Harry Wagstaff Gribble still crackles. Constance Bennett’s mannerisms and her loud voice, possibly a shade more metallic than she intends it to be, become her part. Violet Kemble-Cooper and Gilbert Roland (Luis Antonio Damaso De Alonso, son of a Spanish bullfighter), are the other most noticeable members of an expert cast, expertly directed by George Cukor.

King of the Jungle (Paramount) is another example of the curious affinity which cinema has discovered between male swimming champions and African beasts. In MGM’s Tarzan, The Ape Man, Johnny Weissmuller enjoyed the devotion of a crew of monkeys. In this picture Paramount’s swimmer, Clarence (“Buster”) Crabbe, winner of the 400-metre free style race in the last Olympics, is on intimate terms with lions. When he is lost in the jungle by his parents, Crabbe is adopted by lions which feed him, teach him to wear a leopard-skin loincloth. When the lions are captured by a circus, Crabbe is captured with them and makes a sensation by appearing in their act. He rolls in the sawdust of their cages, saves them when the circus catches fire, eventually takes them all home and sets them loose on a lion rock. Part of the dialog of King of the Jungle is lion-language, in which Crabbe’s vocabulary is limited to a large grunt. Toward the end of his circus career he learns enough English from a kindergarten teacher (Frances Dee) to persuade her to go to Africa with his party.

There is good reason for the cinematic affinity between swimmers and voracious beasts: Tarzan, The Ape Man made money and cinemen are incorrigibly imitative. From the neck down Crabbe easily equals Weismuller as an attraction to female audiences: from the neck up he is a vast improvement. The story is an obvious inversion of the Tarzan formula but has a few minutes of first-rate comedy. Typical shot: Crabbe learning the word “scram,” then using it to a circus lady.