The New Pictures

The Desert Flower. Out of this gold-rush rumpus and all the dusty sentimentality of love in the desert, they have made an ice-cream-cone comedy that is as surprising as it is entertaining. The dance-hall den becomes a place of sweet lullabies and softened hearts. The dance-hall girls spread sunshine instead of sin. Colleen Moore is the girl in question, and never was her piquant presence more invigorating. She picks up a tramp, stiffens up his backbone, discovers he is a millionaire's son from the East.

The Little French Girl. Almost inevitably a popular novel will turn to dust in the grasp of the director--particularly a novel dealing with domestic psychologies of love, legal and otherwise, divorce and that sort of thing. The mother is in love with a soldier; he is engaged to someone else; the mother's daughter gets mixed in it all. Alice Joyce and Neil Hamilton assist with commendable performances.

The Rainbow Trail. Tom Mix, just returned from a triumphant tour of Europe, thunders across one more stretch of prairie in The Rainbow Trail and indicates once more why he is one of the highest salaried actors in the world. He is brave, handsome, picturesque, honorable. He kills Indians, saves a noble white girl. The cowboy is about the only ancient chivalry we have. Mr. Mix is the cardinal cowboy.

Parisian Nights. If these words penetrate to Buffalo Bend and Lockjaw Junction, the inhabitants are hereby warned that the title of this conception might better be: "So This Isn't Paris." It is full of Apaches and helpless American girls wandering the streets; it is full of stealthy smiles and lizard looks; it is full of just what a cinema of Parisian low life would be full of. Of course, the head Apache (Lou Tellegen) has a noble soul and rescues the American millionaires who wanted to sculp and got lost one night.

If Marriage Fails. Whenever a picture is called something like that, you can be sure that "society marriages" are in for a nasty beating. This time, the hero finds sincerity and love--impossible in his spendthrift blonde wife--in a slim and rather recently Italian fortune teller. She is Jacqueline Logan and that helps some.