Cinema: The New Pictures: Jun. 28, 1937

The Road Back (Universal). The night of November 10, 1918, a group of bedraggled German soldiers talk over the chance of an early peace. Says one scoffer: “Aw, the War’s never going to end. It’ll go on forever.” They roll over to sleep in their dugout like rats in a rain-soaked furrow.

Next morning their platoon is sent over the top. Advancing through murk and mire, suffering heavy losses, they valiantly capture an Allied machine-gun nest only to be halted by news of the Armistice. Mutters one: “After four years—and it just fizzled out!”

On the screen or on the printed page, the trench scenes from Erich Maria Remarque’s book brutally picture the universal bewilderment at the War’s end. Author Remarque describes his soldiers’ return to their humdrum homes as a tragic surprise they cannot comprehend. Director James Whale, who adds in the film the signing of the Armistice in Marshal Foch’s railway car, visions their homecoming as both tragic and comic.

The starved German veterans meet a troop of Yankees who trade their canned foods for hat buttons, instruct Soldier Tjaden (Slim Summerville) in the U. S. art of gum-chewing (see cut). In the square of his native Klosterburg, frail Lieutenant Ludwig (Richard Cromwell) is stripped of his insignia by revolutionary ruffians. Romping Willy (Andy Devine) disperses the gang with an apple which he pretends is a hand grenade. Ernst (John King) breaks with his old sweetheart, shuns his family because he cannot endure the leisure and quiet of home. Frustrated and disillusioned, Ernst joins his mates nightly in rowdy drinking fests. Tjaden, wooing the mayor’s daughter, gaily drapes bologna strips about his neck while hungry mobs riot outside.

By mixing fury and farce Director Whale imperils Author Remarque’s poignant theme, but the screen play possesses intense, impressive street scenes. And for a few moments The Road Back illumines a grim War-wrecked civilization, lighting up in a final flash the reawakening of German military mania.

Early in April Los Angeles’ German Consul George Gyssling warned 20 of the cast of The Road Back of possible blacklisting in Germany, where Exile Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was long ago banned by Propaganda Minister Goebbels. In response to an inquiry submitted by the U. S. State Department, the German Ambassador in Washington last week hushed Consul Gyssling.

Slave Ship (Twentieth Century-Fox). Last known U. S. slave ship was The Wanderer, built as a yacht, the fastest craft flying the burgee of the New York Yacht Club. In 1857 her owner, John D. Johnson, sold her to a fellow club-member, W. C. Corrie. New York yachtsmen did not know much about Corrie. He was a mysterious but affable gentleman, amply provided with funds, who professed an interest in the finer points of yachting and declared himself in the market for a speedy boat. After buying The Wanderer he was no longer seen around the club. Refitted and renamed, the tall bark, unmistakable for her clipper bow and sleek racing lines, was recognized by British and U. S. naval officers of the International Slave Patrol, insouciantly ferrying from the west coast of Africa to lonely U. S. inlets.

Slave Ship does not touch upon the sporting background of the bark that plays its title role, but records some of the more sombre legends which sailormen repeated about The Wanderer. She had been launched in blood, killing a workman who was pinioned on the ways as she slid down into the water. Fire and plague beset her voyages. Slaving, outlawed by international agreement in 1814, was practiced in the middle of the century by a few renegade skippers who risked hanging for the $600 to $1,000 per head they could obtain.

Skipper Jim Lovett (Warner Baxter) decided to quit slaving after the Sunday morning when, on his way to get drunk, he met Nancy (Elizabeth Allan) on her way to church. Failing to share his reformation, the Slave Ship crew shanghaied him and his bride, obtained the keys to the gun locker, pointed the bark’s nose for the Congo. Thompson (Wallace Beery), the wily mate, planned to leave Captain Lovett on the beach after the cargo was aboard, but Lovett climbed aboard from a native proa. Annexing the arsenal, Lovett and Nancy, helped by the cabin boy (Mickey Rooney), held the wheel against the ruffian mutineers. At St. Helena, Mate Thompson, with the gallows in his mind, planned to destroy evidence by linking the slaves’ fetters to the anchor chain and dropping anchor. In a free-for-all, Skipper Lovett freed most of the blackbirds, shot Thompson in the belly. Put on trial for slaving, Lovett admitted his guilt. Nancy’s testimony, in the picture’s best dramatic scene, saves his life.

Slave Ship is not for the squeamish. Its eight reels contain an incredible amount of knifing, jaw-punching, conking on the head, lashing in chains, shooting, slapping and assorted casual brutalities. Sometimes its violence is shrewdly planned and powerful; sometimes, particularly when Director Tay Garnett uses for comedy the same form of physical surprise which a moment earlier he was using for horror, it is inept. But the action is generally lusty and well-integrated. Best minor role: Mickey Rooney as the resolute, bewildered cabin boy whose loyalty veers hazardously between the brutal mate and the romantic skipper.

Last Train from Madrid (Paramount) is the first commercial film treating of the Spanish Civil War, and is carefully blue-pencilled to exclude all but stock situations which neither Rightist nor Leftist sympathizers could possibly object to. Karen Morley is in love with Gilbert Roland who is in love with the same girl (Dorothy Lamour) as Anthony Quinn.

The Thirteen (Mosfilm) relates a day’s experience of ten Soviet soldiers, their commander, his wife and an old geologist on their homeward journey across the Siberian Desert. Coming by chance upon a spring frequented by a band of marauding Baschmachi tribesmen, the commander (Ivan Novoseltsev) decides to trap the bandits when they shortly arrive for water. One by one the defenders drop before overwhelming hordes until by the time help comes only Private Akchurin (Ilya Kuznetsov) remains.

Paralleling The Lost Patrol (1934), the simple narrative of The Thirteen supplies its own suspense. Director Mikhail Romm keeps the dialog terse and direct, lets a rifle crack, a sand track, a warwhoop augment the action. Superb photographic sequences: the parleys with the bandit chief, one parched private running amok, the shots of shifting, sliding sand.