The New Pictures

Faces of Children or (U. S. title) Mother of Mine. Once in a while, out of the stream of trade-products, comes a masterpiece--last year The Crowd, this year Faces of Children. It is the first cinema, and one of the few creations in any medium, that gets childhood across. Because of the memory of his dead mother, a boy of ten cannot get used to how things are when his father marries again. His new mother is kind to him, but she has a little daughter whom he has to quarrel with. The struggle of his loyalty against new conditions becomes a struggle between him and his stepsister. Prose, which is life itself and which can be made out of pictures even better than out of words, is the vehicle of Director Jacques Feyder. He makes as exciting as a melodrama a scene of two children ostracizing another child from a game. Other shots: the feet of farmers under a coffin fumbling on a wooden stairway; a boy who has been punished raving at the closed door of his room; a hay-harvest, and, later, an avalanche in the Swiss Alps; the stepmother saving the boy, Jean, from a mountain river where at last he has tried to drown himself.

Dream of Love has what millions of cinema fans want--a beautiful heroine (Joan Crawford) and a handsome hero (Nils Asther) making love in a romantic setting (the mythical Kingdom of Kuremme). The spirit and most of the best lines are inspired by the "legit" play, The Command to Love. A little wittier than most dramas of a prince wavering between a throne and an actress, Dream of Love leans heavily on the sex appeal of Actress Crawford, called "Venus of Hollywood." After each new film Miss Crawford receives ardent letters from thousands of high-school and college boys. She sends them in return, when requested, an autographed bosom and a printed slip stating that she was born in San Antonio, Tex., and educated at a girl's finishing school in Kansas City; that she ran away to Chicago to be an actress, changed her name from Lucille Le Sueur to Joan Crawford after a magazine contest organized to pick a name for her; that she danced for a while at Harry Richman's Club, Manhattan, has won 26 loving cups in dancing competitions; is a good swimmer; has dark hair and brown eyes; is 5 ft. 4 in. high, and weighs 110 lbs.

Lucrecia Borgia. The incestuous love imputed by historians to Cesare Borgia for his sister, Lucrecia, is perfumed to meet censorship requirements by making him her cousin. This change and the reason for it are naively explained in a foreword to the U. S. edition of the production, which was made by a German company in Rome. It might, at slight expense, have been made in Hollywood, for nothing much is done with Roman street scenes and most of the best shots are interiors. Conrad Veidt, in armor, dies after a broadsword fight with his sister's third husband.