The New Pictures
The Siren of Seville. Priscilla Dean has only one fault that bulges out. That is her disposition to play before the camera too infrequently. It is the opinion of many that she is a figure, that she should be fixed in the fronk rank. The Siren is one strong proof. The story tells the familiar bullring yarn-the matador who becomes famed and forgets his childhood sweetheart. The sweetheart saves his life in the final bullfight scene, wholly preposterously. All this Miss Dean whips into fresh and agile entertainment. There are not many actresses equipped for such a task. Forbidden Paradise. Pola Negri and Ernst Lubitsch, playing again on the same team that made Passion, are inevitably excellent. They chose a play called The Czarina in which Doris Keane starred not so long ago. The story is an amiable satire on the delights and drawbacks of Royalty. Rod La Rocque plays the captain of the Guard whom the star promotes in rank as he rises in her affections. The picture is one of the best Miss Negri has ever made and final proof that the famous duet of Negri-Lubitsch is a dominant addition to the camera industry of California.
Married Flirts jumbles familiarly about with wives and husbands who will not stay firmly married. Two wives and two husbands are shuffled back and forth with no particular success as entertainment. Pauline Frederick is included to bolster up an obviously weak narrative. The sum total is singularly meagre.
The Fast Set was what they called Spring Cleaning. The latter will be recalled as Frederick Lonsdale's exceedingly sophisticated idyl of London society. The husband, to eliminate certain of his wife's domestically distasteful tendencies, invites a street walker to a formal dinner party. Certain specially flavored bits of sex discussion have been eliminated in the picture, taming the result down to the censor's level. It is seldom that what is known as a "society drama" makes a deep dent when caught by the camera. Outdoors is more tractable to the director then the shifting suavities of the drawing room. The Fast Set makes no exception. Adolph J. Menjou gives his usual complete and competent performance.
The Greatest Love of All. The talking cinemas do not work very well just yet. George Beban had an idea that he could create a substitute. He collected the cast for this play and interwove scenes with the actual players on the stage and the scenes from the studio on the film. Though the experiment is obviously too cumbersome to attain a widespread representation, it makes a magnetic novelty for picture stages and screens in the cities. It is understood that Mr. Beban has already tried it outside of Manhattan and will take his reels and his troupe on tour. The story is moderately entertaining with Mr. Beban playing an Italian immigrant who loves his mother and becomes an iceman.
The Beloved Brute would probably have been beloved eight years ago. At present he is decidedly out of fashion. Played by a new star, Victor McLaglen, he is long on chest expansion and ill-equipped with soul. It was the love of a good woman that finally brought him around. Meanwhile, there is much talk about breaking men with bare hands, several fights, crimson ladies, one-eyed comedians and the good old, sure-fire Western wallop.
East of Broadway. Cops and crooks in disagreement, with the genial Owen Moore heading the police detachment, make one more motion picture. The deadly seriousness of most pictures of the type is happily discarded; and the piece is played as comedy. Both the picture's punch and the star's are delivered with a smile. Accordingly, the proceeding becomes eminently bearable and at times refreshing. Marguerite de la Motte and Mary Carr contribute liberally to the entertainment quota.