Cinema: The New Pictures: Jan. 12, 1931

The Man Who Came Back (Fox).

After a seven-month separation while the Fox publicity department astutely built up popular demand for their reappearance together, Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor are brought together again in this rewrite of a stagey, old-fashioned melodrama. He is a rich man’s wastrel son. She is a cabaret entertainer who is about to make a man of him, when they are separated. When they meet again she has become a drug addict and he is in the act of trading his fraternity ring for a bottle of booze. In a whirl of misty sentiment they work out each other’s salvation. In addition to other faults there is far too much talk in the picture and both principals are ludicrously miscast. These are the most serious roles Farrell & Gaynor have ever tried. The results should prove to anyone’s satisfaction that the only thing they can do on the screen is what they made their reputation for—poetic comedy-dramas of young love. Most gratifying shot: exposure of the villain as a detective in the service of Farrell’s rich father.

After seeing her in High Society Blues, Janet Gaynor’s husband, Lydell Peck, San Francisco lawyer, advised her to accept no more such roles, told her the best way to make the Fox company feel her value was to leave them for a while. Though rumored to be quarreling with Peck, Janet Gaynor quarreled with Fox. She and her mother got on a boat for Honolulu. On the boat by accident she met Farrell, whom the public believed to have been Husband Peck’s rival before her marriage. Afraid of scandal, Farrell took his bags, got off the boat. Janet Gaynor stayed away from the Fox studio until she had lost $44,000 in salary. She came back because she was afraid if she remained rebellious all the studios would boycott her. This is her first picture since making peace with her employers.

The Right to Love (Paramount). In spite of the sincere and energetic attempts of Director Richard Wallace, Ruth Chatterton and a brilliant cast to make this picture command respect for its poetic content, the most interesting thing about it remains the technical perfection which it displays. Ruth Chatterton at 18 and Ruth Chatterton at 45 not only chat in the same room but walk past each other, in defiance of the old law of double exposure. Another new technical departure is a device which, more effectively than any other tried heretofore, eliminates “ground noise,” i. e. the scratch and hum of projection machinery. The dialog is thrown into high relief, not always to the advantage of the picture. It is a story about a woman of the farmlands who, when her lover is killed in a reaping machine, marries an unattractive neighbor to father her child. The illegitimate daughter, when she hears the story, rebels against her mother, forswears love, goes to China to do mission work. At the end she runs away from the mission school with Paul Lukas. As both mother and daughter Ruth Chatterton is skilfully but unconvincingly theatrical. Best shot: Naomi Kellogg (Ruth Chatterton at 45) on her deathbed.

Paid (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Except for its concluding intricacies, worked out along lines immemorially established for stage police departments and district attorneys’ offices, Paid is an effective program piece. It is Bayard Veiller’s old play, Within the Law, modernized by Charles MacArthur as a vehicle for Joan Crawford. For some reason, principally because of her success in party-pictures and because there are already more than enough emotional actresses in the picture business, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has shown some reluctance in letting Joan Crawford play straight parts. This policy is puzzling because she can hold her own with any of the company’s other actresses, not excepting Greta Garbo. She is a salesgirl sent to jail for shoplifting by the falsely pious testimony of her employer. When she gets out she marries her employer’s son for revenge. Best shot: Miss Crawford in a white evening wrap.