The New Pictures

Black Oxen. The wave of comment blown up by Mrs. Gertrude Atherton's novel washed it immediately into the movies. To play it, Corinne Griffith and Conway Tearle were summoned. They managed to do some rather effective acting in a moderately uninteresting play. The plot, of course, discusses the rejuvenation of Mme. Zattiany and her absorbing effect on Lee Clavering, newspaper columnist.

Pleasure Mad. When the producers forget that their films are manufactured for the projection room oi a theatre and not for a pulpit there is apt to be dullness. The lesson for this particular evening is the parable of the poor family who suddenly found themselves wealthy. Scrutinizing of the title enables one to guess the outcome.

Reno. Those who witness this film and take it seriously might just as well decide never to get married at all. Rupert Hughes has perceived that the conflicting State divorce laws are far too complicated for the American citizen who goes in for marriage as a comprehensive study. He may be married in one state, bigamous in another and, after supporting his fair share of wives for a number of years, find that he has been a bachelor all his life. All these arguments Mr. Hughes has woven into a singularly tedious picture. The spectacular absurdity of his disposal of the villain (the hero throws him into a boiling Yellowstone geyser, the geyser evinces internal retching and active nausea, the villain is spewed several hundred feet in the air) provides a grotesque conclusion. One gathers that Mr. Hughes favors either a national code of divorce laws or a wider distribution of geysers.

Through the Dark. To those who have learned through long acquaintance with the cinema that crooks have hearts of gold, the moral of this film will undoubtedly appeal. A simple boarding school girl assists a criminal to escape from San Quentin prison by a pleasantly incredible device; drawn into his underworld life, she finally regenerates him with her love. On the face of it such a yarn seems almost impossibly cinemesque. Colleen Moore manages to make it plausible in spots.