Cinema: The New Pictures Aug. 26, 1929

Madonna of Avenue A (Warner). A Bootlegger who sings nicely in the moonlight, accompanying himself on the guitar, meets a lonely girl from a private school, teaches her how to drink. Ousted from school, the girl visits Manhattan to find the Park Avenue home her mother has spoken of so often. It is a dull, wandering fiction, hardly made bearable by the good looks of Dolores (Mrs. John Barrymore) Costello. Most expected shot: the moment when the girl and her mother meet in a bar where the mother, who had lied about her high estate, has been swigging with sailors.

The Power of Evil (Armenian). Said to be the first feature production made under supervision of the Armenian Soviet, The Power of Evil tells what happens when a family conceals the fact that its daughter has epilepsy so as to marry her to the richest young man in the village. It is subtly acted, well photographed, superbly directed. U. S. audiences, familiar with the works of Armenian mot-maker Michael Arlen (Dikran Kouyoumdjian) will find no traces of that young man’s simpering suavity in this sombre, compact story. You see how the bridegroom’s mother and sister plot to get rid of the girl, first by such witchcrafts as burying a crow in the garden, later by murder. Best shot: Barbara Matatian’s realization, as she comes into her husband’s house for the last time, that something dangerous, terrible, something she cannot see, is waiting for her in the shadows beyond the door.

The Hollywood Revue (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This is good-humored, fast film vaudeville, with nice tunes and without a story. There are some new tricks in it. When the master of ceremonies looks for Bessie Love he finds her in his change-pocket; a lilliputian Marion Davies appears with a chorus of giant Grenadiers, later grows up to normal size. During one of the color sequences there is a trick with perfume; the spectators sniff—is it possible?—yes, they smell orange blossoms. Gus Edwards sings “Lon Chancy Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out;” Norma Shearer and John Gilbert put on the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet; Marie Dressier sings and prances around. Sometimes slapstick turns into comedy, sometimes comedy trails off into slapstick. The Hollywood Revue is not sophisticated but it is good entertainment. Best song: ‘Singing in the Rain.’ Prettiest girl: Joan Crawford. Silliest shot: Jack Benny covered with icing from the cake. Best shot: Marie Dressier imitating Marie of Rumania. To publicize the film in Manhattan, a smart manager put up a “human billboard” of flesh-&-blood chorus girls outside the theatre.

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Frederick Lonsdale’s comedy of the woman who gets into society so that her criminal associates can steal pearls depends less on plot and more on dialog than most plays of its type. It is satirical, sentimental, witty. It set, in its season, a new fashion in drawing-room drama. It is as effective as a talking picture as it was on the legitimate stage. Although the manuscript has been followed so closely that if you look sharp you can catch in the picture the momentary pauses that marked the play’s division into acts, it is not a photograph of a play. It is a reproduction in which dramatic values have been replaced by cinematic values and which is skillfully acted by film players trained to understand the camera. The voices come out clearly and naturally, not yet as clearly as real people talking, but modulated so that you forget the sound device. Best shots: Norma Shearer wringing a proposal from Basil Rathbone; Norma Shearer stealing back into her room with her hostess’ pearls.

Norma Shearer was having a good time at débutante parties in Montreal when, in 1921, her family lost most of its money. She and her mother and her sister Athol went to Manhattan and lived in a furnished room on 9th Avenue and 59th Street, eating their meals in delicatessens and out of paper bags set out on the top of their trunk. Norma posed for advertisements, worked now and then as an extra. After Lewis J. Selznick gave her a good part in The Flapper she began to get offers from West Coast producers. Now wife of Irving Thalberg, production manager of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she lives in one of the biggest houses in Hollywood. She yearly wins the Hollywood women’s tennis championship, weekly or oftener takes a bath in starched water to preserve her beauty. Once she danced with the Prince of Wales and won a diving contest staged for him. Once she won a medal by holding a smile longer than other competing actresses. She drives a Chrysler car, dresses in a room mounted on wheels, likes rice pudding, consults fortune tellers. Most of her pictures have been vapid dramas of high life, assigned to her because of her social background: Pleasure Mad, Broken Barriers, His Secretary, The Latest from Paris, Slave of Fashion.

The Greene Murder Case (Paramount). Since in writing murder stories an author’s development, if it takes place at all, must be along the line of murders, S. S. Van Dine, who made his first reputation out of stories with one murder, went on brilliantly to four in the Greene family. Director Frank Tuttle, who photographed The Canary Murder Case, used District Attorney Markham, Detective Sergeant Heath and Super-Detective Philo Vance (William Powell) again to find out who was killing all the Greenes. Perhaps because of the great number of Greenes who must die before the murderer is tracked down, the picture seems to move heavily, doggedly, to the point where erudite Philo Vance patiently explains his solution of the murder, while the murderer lures a final victim away. Best shot: Chester Greene confronted by his murderer.