The New Pictures

Strauss: the Waltz King (German). A formless, well-acted, full-length silent biographical film tells how Johann Strauss became a composer in spite of his father's opposition. It is hard to believe that young Strauss's life was as fantastic as this but the important facts are authentic and the scenarist's guesses about the detail are as,; good as anyone's. You lose interest in Strauss but do not give him up for good until he is playing his own tunes at the wedding of his sweetheart to another fellow. Silliest sequence: Strauss jilting the pastry cook's daughter for some reason obscurely connected with one of his father's lectures on personal liberty.

In Old Siberia (Amkino). A sly, shriveled fellow with the stealth of a fox and the cruelty of a eunuch arrives at a Siberian prison in the Tsar's time and begins to run things the way he wants them. The picture is not a story but a description of the way the imperial prisons are said to have been. There is propaganda in it, but that is kept out of sight. Its horror, too is kept out of sight, brought to life by suggestion until it becomes a mood as palpable as a sound, like something howling. This would not be possible if there was any real howling, but the picture is silent. You never see the prisoners tortured; you see them working on the rock-pile and coming in for meals. Best shot: the jailer's birthday party.

Wonder of Women (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). By thoughtful creation of character this film avoids being a restatement of one of the standard generalities about people with artistic temperament. It is adapted from Sudermann's The Wife of Stephen Tromholt and the outlines of the original story, even its tragic ending, have been intelligently adhered to. Lewis Stone is the composer who marries a poor widow with three children and who sticks to her in spite of his attraction to a younger woman. Peggy Wood is his wife. Stone leaves her once, then comes home, acknowledges his responsibility. Five years later he goes to Berlin again, sees Leila Hyams again, makes up his mind to be free, goes back to tell his wife what he has decided. While he is at home she dies. There are men and women, humor, sadness and struggle in this picture. It misses being a great picture only because its story is not a big enough framework for its implications and because the actors have their own way too much. You feel that it would be better if its workmanship were not so finicky. Half of it is silent and half in dialog. The silent part is the most effective. Best shot: Miss Wood teaching her family to sing Christmas carols.

Peggy Wood grew up in Brooklyn, N. Y., and went to Miss Brown's school and Manual Training High School, then got in the chorus of Naughty Marietta. After that she took many unimportant parts in successful plays: she was the pretty maid who, helping the leading lady into her negligee, told her that her husband had telephoned he would not be back for dinner. Her first big part was in Maytime. She is a friend of George Arliss and Noel Coward. She married John Van Alstyn Weaver, the "in American" writer, who had lived a few streets away from her in Brooklyn. She is 35. has a son, sings nicely, plays the piano, does not care for sports. Recently, with extraordinary optimism she said: ". . . From Lewis Stone I learned whatever there was necessary to know about screen acting."

Last fortnight Actress Wood opened in Playwright Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet in England, received "rave" notices for able acting, chaste diction.

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu

(Paramount). In covers marked "Algebra," by flashlights propped under tents of bedclothes, in luxurious libraries and first-class deck chairs, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories, from which this picture is loosely taken, have been read by prep school boys, financiers and great statesmen for nearly two decades. Their fascination lies in the fact that motive is not an element of their plots. It might be terrible to read about a killer who killed for a reason but it is more terrible to read about one who killed for no reason. That this picture, though well made, fails to get the flavor of the stories is because Fu Manchu is rationalized. He kills Englishmen to get even with them for killing his wife and child during the reprisals that followed the Boxer Rebellion. He remains the central figure of a mystery story which, affirming the values of normal life as a basis for its fantasy, becomes immediately unlikely and therefore dull. Warner Oland (Fu Manchu) who used to be an opera singer, makes his cold, tight voice the most exciting noise in the picture. Typical shot: Oland pointing to the lime-pit into which he plans presently to drop one of the Petrie family.