New Pictures

Metropolis. Ufa, German creators of the masterpieces, Siegfried, The Last Laugh, Variety, have released what they herald as their supreme achievement, Metropolis. It is the name of a futuristic city, built on a gargantuan iron skeleton, with whole communities superimposed upon one another in prismatic vastnesses--the dwelling-place of men who live to slave for their own machines.

When first the huge city was flashed upon the screen, its structures stretching with geometric relentlessness into the infinite heavens, its enormous pistons thumping, dynamos roaring, cogwheels whirring, it was agreed that nothing so immense, grand, complete had ever been comprehended by the eye. For a while it seemed as if one would behold an entire civilization revealed from an Olympian vantage point, would glimpse its heart palpitating beneath steel ribs. Then the scenario took hold, reduced the magnificent spectacle to the condition of a god smothered with a dishrag.

The philosophical content (since it is strongly put forward) : Efficiency, the fiend created by Inventor to resemble Mary (symbol of heart-love) thus to win the soul of man for capitalist Masterman, leads Humanity toward destruction. Humanity discovers its error, burns Efficiency at the stake, thus releases itself from industrial slavery. Understanding, sympathy, apparently, are needed to lessen the labors of man, not mechanical exactitude. Once the human impulses are unchecked by Efficiency, the milk of human kindness overflows everywhere, class distinctions are washed away in the flood, the toiler's working day is shortened. A Harold Bell Wright mentality wrestling with a Rousseauistic sentiment might have evolved as much.

The dramatic substance is even shoddier. Villain Inventor chases Mary up a roof, intent upon dashing her to earth, in the manner of spiteful evildoers since Desperate Desmond. The hero pursues. During the struggle, Capitalist Masterman swears if the hero (his son) be spared, he will henceforth treat all workingmen like brothers, never again allow a monster like Efficiency to be created. The villain topples off the roof. With Efficiency and Invention thus disposed of, happiness comes to man, the hero finds the heroine's lips, Labor and Capital strike hands, the city destroyed by evil counsel of Efficiency is to be rebuilt--how, is not divulged. Ufa might better have shut the eyes of its great cameras than permit them to reflect nonsense in such grandeur.

Stark Love depicts customs and manners of sequestered mountain folk, North Carolina. Director and Author Karl Brown got them to act their primitive lives before his camera. The natives use no makeup, register no artful emotions. Men sleep, hunt, fish, sleep. Women hoe, bear children, scrub dishes, chop wood, cook, clean, bear children. The men live longer. The mere projection of such crude civilization, the knowledge that it still persists among lineal descendants of American settlers is enough to make the film's substance fascinating.

In addition, however, the director included a pretty romance. The only person in the hills who can read is Rob Warwick (Forrest James). He alone knows that in the outer world beyond the mountains, women are protected and respected, that a woman was once invited by a man to tread upon his cloak in order to avoid soiling her shoes. Such regard he would have for Barbara Allen (Helen Munday) of the North Carolina Hills. But his father, having worked his mother to death, decides to take that girl to be "his new woman," after concluding a bargain with her father. The two young people escape by clinging to a log rushed down the valley on a swollen stream.

Director Brown has used only four actors. The rest of the characters are natives who were unconscious of the fact that the various scenes in which they played were to be strung together to make a motion picture story. Before the film, an old actor, once native to the Great Smokies of North Caroline, assures the audience that Director Brown's life would not be safe were he to return to the people whose story he filched.

An Affair of the Follies (Billie Dove). The heroine, a beautous chorus girl, is subjected to the usual rigors of the chase--the stock broker (Lewis Stone), the poor but honest hero (Lloyd Hughes). She gives up her $150-a-week job to try living on the hero's $60, thereby makes the plutocrat dangerous, her husband mad. It ends according to the Will Hays standard, with wealth and happiness for the virtuous. The cast is engaging in spite of the scenario.

Blind Alleys (Thomas Meighan). The bride is carried off by gunmen. The bridegroom, loath to part, pursues. There are reels of his bursting into rooms from which she has just burst out.