The New Pictures

Love is certainly a poor translation of the title of Anna Karenina. It would be natural to suppose that the rest of famed Leo Tolstoi's novel would suffer similarly; that it does not, is due in part to the direction of Edmund Goulding and in even larger part to the acting of Greta Garbo.

The story definitely follows the outlines of what has been called "greatest novel in the world." Anna Karenina meets Count Vronsky one snowy day, has an affair with him that reaches its climax when she leaves her husband and its conclusion when she accepts a defeat (which is totally inevitable) by stepping in front of a fast train. That any film producer should begin by calling his picture Love and end it with this necessary but cinematically unconventional tragedy is only one of the many contradictions, which in their sum, make this one of the most striking adaptations yet effected.

There are four moments upon which the focus of the story falls: the snowstorm in which, after an accident to her sleigh, Anna meets Count Vronsky; the steeplechase in which he rides with the gay officers of his regiment; the moment when Anna Karenina, after she has gone away with her lover, creeps into the bedroom where her son is asleep; and the moment when, a vague figure in veils, she vanishes as silently as a bird's wing in the brightness of a locomotive's headlight.

These moments belong mostly to Swedish Greta Garbo whose beauty infuses the picture with a cold white glow; John Gilbert as Vronsky is too frequently exposed to a highly approximate lens, he is too willing to act only with his teeth or his hair, to duplicate the excellence of his performance in The Big Parade. But his inadequacies are minor and partly made evident by contrast. Good handling of minor parts by George Fawcett, Brandon Hurst, Emily Fitzroy and Philippe de Lacy, intelligent photography, brilliant direction are enough for any picture that includes such a performance as that supplied by Actress Garbo. The Wreck of the Hesperus, Longfellow's famed poem in its apparently rapid journey through the studios to the screen, has acquired a hero, a horse and a happy ending. The last is effected when the horse, with some aid from the hero, drags the girl from the sea. The skipper (who lashed his daughter to the mast), is the only member of the cast who drowns. The performances supplied by Frank Marion as the hero and Virginia Bradford as the girl are not nearly so convincing as the realistic energy contributed by wind and wave.

Very Confidential is designed to show that if Madge Bellamy were a shopgirl she could go to a fashion resort and make another girl's fiance fall in love with her. The picture would have been more creditable had Actress Bellamy been instructed to control her belligerent coyness.

The Thirteenth Hour provides Lionel Barrymore with an opportunity to do a highly effective imitation of Lon Chaney imitating a three-fingered master crook. Despite his missing digit, Mr. Barrymore is capable of opening all kinds of sliding doors and secret panels; but he is incapable of stealing the picture from a police dog called Rex in the picture (real name Napoleon). Although at an important crisis he mistakes Mr. Barrymore for a wax dummy, this animal adds enormously to what would otherwise remain a not very startling reiteration of the Jekyll-Hyde theme complicated by stupid detectives.

The Spotlight. Herein a little U. S. blonde, Lizzie Stokes, is transformed into dark and dangerous Russian actress, Olga Rostova, thus allowing Esther Ralston to prove that she can be quite as intriguing under a black wig as under her own shingled gold. The plot moves quietly along until the moment when Olga Rostova must tell her most devoted admirer in the presence of her producer and severest critic that she is, in reality, no Russian beauty but only poor little Lizzie Stokes. At this crisis, Esther Ralston also proves that she can actually act when circumstances make it imperative. The Wizard is one of those melodramatic mystery cinemas whose plots are based on the misbehavior of a subhuman creature. In this case, the creature (generally referred to as the "Thing") is conjured into existence by a wicked surgeon to accomplish the death of four persons; needless to say one of the four persons is the heroine and needless to say the hero, a young newspaper reporter, rescues her from the disastrous embraces. Before this happens there have been many moments when watchers, in an agony of excitement, have twisted their terror into laughter. The hero is merrily played by Edmund Lowe, the heroine charmingly by Leila Hyams, the "Thing" effectively imitated by one George Kotsonaros.

Peaks of Destiny. So enormous are the powdered peaks of the Alps, so wild and casual the winds that sweep between them that the actions of people must seem in comparison fragile and inconsequent, even unreal. The people in this picture are mainly three; Diotina, a dancer, whose amorous flippancies stir her fiance to jealousy as they stir his young friend to devotion. The fiance traps his friend on a high and dangerous ledge; then, at the instant of carrying out his plan, he regrets it and clings to a rope through a night of storm until men arrive to rescue both of them. The melodrama of the story would make it seem strained in any setting; but such is the splendor of the background that probably any play of human emotions would be dwarfed against it. Brilliant photography of snow storms and ski races, capable if not superlative acting by Leni Riefenstahl, Louis Trenker and Ernst Peterson, make the picture a valuable and exciting experiment in spectacle and a worthy product of the German UFA, noted for its success in experimenting.

Silk Stockings. As an element of a screen plot, silk stockings are invariably matched with a divorce suit. In this case the divorce is consummated on condition that its principals remain apart for the space of a year. It takes approximately ten minutes for Laura La Plante to break this condition and effect a reconciliation with her husband. Her whimsies and her husband's bewildered attempts at an incongruous pomposity make the picture more than mildly if not quite wildly entertaining.