The New Pictures

The Circus. A little ridiculous tramp, very hungry and without funds, was standing beside a pickpocket. The pickpocket grabbed from a rich man a watch, a wallet, saw that he had been observed, dropped the wallet & watch into the little tramp's pocket, slunk off. Pursued by the pickpocket the little tramp at last became aware of the fat purse that he was carrying. Pleased, he walked over to a hot-dog stand and bought himself a sausage; then he looked at his new watch. The proper owner of watch and wallet, approaching the little tramp, grabbed for his property. The little tramp ran away and dodged into a big tent where there was a circus. Here he amused the spectators by his foolishness, got a job as property man, amused more audiences by his inept efforts to control his props. He fell in love with the circus proprietor's daughter, attempted to fake a tight-rope act, got nibbled by monkeys, ran away, helped the circus proprietor's daughter to marry a competent tight-rope walker. Then the little tramp, gay and forlorn, walked away down a road until he was out of sight.

This is the plot of The Circus. The little ridiculous tramp is Charlie Chaplin. It is necessary now, not to say that he is funny, but to say how funny he is. It is a case for superlatives, but not for the kind of superlatives that were properly scattered at The Gold Rush. There is nothing in The Circus to match the moment in which Actor Chaplin, with all the fine frenzy of a gourmet dissecting a brace of broiled quail, ate a Christmas dinner consisting of an old, very tough, boiled boot; or that in which he amused his imaginary guests with a miniature ballet dance, furnished by two forks, each shod with a roll. But it would be very difficult not to laugh at Charles Chaplin when he finds that the wire is broken which was to have preserved his equilibrium on the high, dangerous tightrope; and when, to add to this horrible predicament, three vicious monkeys run after him and tear his clothes off. These are not, moreover, the only truly comic moments in The Circus. Scarcely any period of 30 seconds passes without supplying new and highly legitimate grounds for laughter.

A Texas Steer. Will Rogers has become an international humorist. His genial or acidulous lucubrations were once heard, between twirls of a lariat, from the stage of the Ziegfeld Follies; they have since been telegraphed to the New York Times from many odd corners of the globe; they have been accepted with positive pleasure in capitals of Europe. All this has not, obviously, made him proud. Recently, between the moments when a motion picture camera was clicking at his pleasant homely face, a stenographer trailed Funnyman Rogers around the Hollywood studios of the First National Picture Co., jotting down unostentatiously, the words which fell from his lips. These words, many of them, are now the subtitles of A Texas Steer, a cinema in which William Penn Adair Rogers (son of a Cherokee Indian) imitates the antics of a Congressman.

Funnyman Rogers's confessed formula for accomplishing his imitation was merely to "act natural." On one occasion he does his natural acting clad completely in a nightgown and a waterproof coat; in which garb he runs about the U. S. capital and then makes a speech in a replica of the House of Representatives. The story which explains his presence in this place has to do with the social ambitions foisted on him by his wife (admirably played by Louise Fazenda) and with a juvenile romance of which the principals are Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Lilyan Tashman.

The Dove. Noah Beery, as a badman with a long name, very nearly works his will upon Dolores, a cabaret singer, beautiful but pure. Efforts to curtail the accomplishment of his nasty schemes are supplied by youthful Johnny Powell, an American who, by the merest chance, is running a gambling casino in the same obscure corner of the country. The success of Johnny Powell's combat to make Costa Roja (by which name the country is called, so as not to irritate Mexican film followers) safe for the virginity of Dolores is achieved in highly original and satisfactory fashion. Instead of beating the bandit to a pulp, the usual procedure in such extremes, Johnny Powell is himself captured and stood up in front of a firing squad. At this juncture a speech from Dolores convinces "the best damn caballero in all Costa Roja" that his methods are all wrong. With an expansive gesture, for no reason except his own desire to be magnificent even at the cost of a lot of fun, the caballero calls off his gunmen and allows Dolores and Johnny Powell to ride away in a carriage. Then, as he watches them driving off, he remarks with pleasure: "Dios, what a man I am!"

Plot, photography, direction and the performances of Noah Beery and Norma Talmadge, (Dolores) make the picture about three notches better than the run of hot country idylls.

Cinemactress Talmadge, in all her many and variegated roles, has never failed, nor does she now, to surround herself with good clothes and scenery. Cinemactor Beery is probably the most attractively disagreeable individual in the artistic branch of the cinema industry. As a cinema, The Dove is even more effective than it was on the Manhattan stage, (TIME, Feb. 23, 1925), as written by Willard Mack, as produced by famed David Belasco.

Jeanne Dore was made in 1914, in the days when Actress Sarah Bernhardt was already an old legend in the French theatre and in the days, also, when moving pictures were so appallingly inept that their subsequent development, incomplete as it may yet be, seems a miracle. In Jeanne Dore, even the charm of the most famed French actress appears to be no more than the mournful mouthing and gesticulation of an extra lady undergoing a screen test for the role of Hamlet's mother. The plot makes Mme. Bernhardt the parent of a wild young man who kills his uncle because he loves a bad woman. The picture, when it is resuscitated again to show future generations what a great actress looked like, will produce a tragic misimpression quite removed from its present merit as burlesque.

West Point is a companion piece to Tell It to the Marines in which William Haines, as a young leatherneck, was bullied, bulldozed, and befriended by tough Sergeant O'Hara, as impersonated by Lon Chaney. Without Chancy, West Point, in which William Haines has his effete and aristocratic intolerance removed by a brisk application of parades, punishments, football games, and polite romance, is a lighter, less consequential comedy. As such, it is blithe, casual, flippant, almost constantly entertaining.

Two Flaming Youths. W. C. Fields playing with a peculiar cigar, making light of his poor little partner, trying to run a circus whose rings are continuously rolling away from him in several directions, is a very funny spectacle indeed. His poor little partner, Chester Conklin, is also funny.