The New Pictures

The Gaucho. A "Gaucho" is a South American cowboy of Spanish-Indian extraction. There is a legend about one of these Gauchos who became an outlaw and galloped through the mountains at the head of a reckless ragged army. Eventually, this legend came to the ears of Douglas Fairbanks. The inevitable occurred. First scenarios, then sets, extras, cameras, fade-outs, cuttings, retakes. By this time the Gaucho was no longer a legend; he had turned into a very real little man, smoking cigarets incessantly, leaping gymnastically from banister to balustrade, smiling gaily and with buoyant naivete.

The story is the usual merry epic of a Fairbanks production. It begins with the miracle of the pool by which a shepherdess is made whole by looking at a vision of the Virgin Mary, whom, if the shepherdess had known her Hollywood, she would have recognized as Mary Pickford, America's sweetheart. A city grows up around the shrine of the pool. Hearing of the wealth which grateful recipients of its healing power have laid at the feet of the shepherdess (now the priestess of the shrine), El Gaucho rides toward it through imaginary Andes, as steep and beautiful as the mountains of the moon. On the way he stops to pick up a hoydenish little mountain girl. With her he descends upon the city of the miracle, capturing it, in the Fairbanks manner, unassisted. Treachery and leprosy combine to despoil him of his victory. But on his side there are the mountain girl, the girl of the shrine, and of course the Virgin. A triple play, in which a herd of cattle deserves credit for assisting the denouement, gets the Gaucho out of jail, rescues the city once more from the army of Ruiz the usurper and restores the mountain girl to the arms of her inamorata. Immediate marriage is in prospect as the projection machine stops buzzing. As a rule, the important thing in a Fairbanks picture is not the story or the settings which are, in this one, fairly weak and excellent respectively. The important thing is the stocky mercurial fellow who rides and jumps and fights (in this case using the South-American "bolas") with such irresistible nonchalance. In The Gaucho the rule holds; but Lupe Velez as "the mountain girl" steals some of her idol's honors.

She's A Sheik. The dreary monotony of male sheiks who gallop along the hot snows of the desert is made agreeably absurd by a reversal of formula. The beautiful Zaida (Bebe Daniels) kidnaps one Captain Colton (Richard Arlen). This, after a long interval of comic complications, leads to a war with the native Arabians who are repulsed by an adroit insertion of machina in machina. On the sandy screen of white desert dunes, Zaida causes a newsreel, showing a vast army on the march, to be projected. Not used to this kind of mirage, the Arabs surrender rapidly just before the newsreel begins to make battleships float along the Sahara. The surrender of the Arabs is almost coincidental with the final surrender of Captain Colton to the charms of Bebe Daniels, who, in the role of a female Fairbanks, is by no means uncaptivating.

Husbands or Lovers provides somewhat sombre proof that immorality is poor policy. The wife (Elizabeth Bergner) leaves her husband (Emil Jannings) for a lover (Conrad Veidt) who grows tired of strenuous affection in a furnished room. At the last she decides the question of husband or lover by choosing neither and committing suicide. All this does not make for light entertainment; but, like most films made in Germany, the picture displays the advantages of intelligent direction with fine acting.

Good Time Charley, after the fashion of the major portion of the season's spoken drama, features the play behind the scenes, the tear behind the smile. Warner Oland, as a woebegone clown, picks his way carefully and with success through the pathos that at times threatens to bog the story. In the supporting cast, Helene Costello supplies decoration, Montague Love villainy and Clyde Cook a fine performance in a minor role.

The Gorilla is one of those productions which are offered with the request that the circumstances of the plot remain undivulged. Since the plot is the picture, there remains little to be said; except that an enormous artificial animal in the title role makes it very exciting for the rest of the cast and the entire audience.