The New Pictures

The Love Parade (Paramount). When Adolphe Menjou, dismayed by the prospect of playing in talking films, left Hollywood and went to live in Paris, this picture, which had been written for him, was made over for Maurice Chevalier. A captain of the Guards who marries a Queen finds that his share in the government of Sylvania is limited to what he can do in a boudoir. It is a boldly amorous, decorative, at times amusing combination of drawing-room farce and Balkan operetta. Chevalier does well with songs that would be dull under less skillful handling. Director Ernst Lubitsch has arranged handsome scenes-- marching grenadiers, palaces hung with cascades of stairs, a royal wedding in which flowers, lace and plumes seem blown into the set from pealing organ stops and braying horns. Neither this background nor the heavy-footed dialog is well adapted to the natural technique, essentially informal and Parisian, of M. Chevalier. Lubitsch too, who has in the past shown propensities for wit, seems at a disadvantage with his material. Best shot: how the Queen (Jeanette MacDonald) interprets a salute of 400 cannon.

People first began talking about Ernst Lubitsch when Pola Negri was getting popular. He directed her in the pictures that made her reputation--Gypsy Blood, Montmartre, One Arabian Night. With her he made Madame Du Barry, called Passion in the U. S., which was credited for reviving a vogue in historical costume pictures. Son of a Berlin storekeeper, Lubitsch learned about acting from a comedian named Victor Arnold and from Max Reinhardt, who hired him for a while. After the Negri pictures, he showed that he was even better at comedy than serious things. He colored The Marriage Circle with a sophisticated, subtle wit. Last year he made The Patriot. Burly, with a habit of scowling slightly, he likes sun baths, rye bread, practical jokes. He treats the young women working for him with waggish irascibility. Complained Miss MacDonald, neophyte, last week:

"When there were some visitors on the set he would say, 'Now Miss MacDonald, try to act for a change. Ach, but you are a dumb girl!' When I asked why he had engaged me for the role if I were so dumb he would say, 'Ach, I was dumb too, that day.' ... I wanted to see a finished print of The Love Parade. Every time I told Lubitsch he would tell me, 'Don't be so anxious, I've cut most of your scenes out. There's plenty of you lying around on the floor.'

"The Saturday Night Kid (Paramount). As Stage Producer Jed Harris' first play, when it was called Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, this was a gentle story about some young people who worked in a department store--two sisters and the youth they were competing for. It has been made into a satisfactory program picture that was advertised at some houses last week without a title in the firesign, being indicated simply as "Clara Bow's Latest." The Saturday Night Kid is a better product than such emphasis on its star's drawing-power seems to imply. Although the plot is composed of such familiar elements as one sister's sacrifices for another who repays her by stealing her clothes and her fiance's affections, it is effective because it gives the well-made, impetuous Miss Bow a part that suits her. Between sentimental passages the routine of a great U. S. department store is lustily though clumsily satirized. Best shot: Store-Owner Ginsberg addressing his employes.

The Kiss (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Greta Garbo is in this one. It is silent, yet its climax takes place in the locale that sound pictures have dealt with more successfully than any other--a murder trial. Garbo's brilliance as one more misunderstood wife is alone responsible for the crowds that lined up a block long to see it in cities where it was shown last week. Her husband is older than she. She kills him when he is pummeling a boy who tried to kiss her. Her lawyer, who is her real lover, convinces the jury that her husband committed suicide. Throughout these proceedings Greta Garbo wears beautiful, oulandish clothes. At times her talent even brings a flash of something vital and convincing to the dull, over-photographed sequences. Best shot: three cleaning women eating lunch at the judge's bench after session.

Song of Love (Columbia). An exposure of the difficulties of backstage motherhood reaches its denouement when one Buddy Gibson (David Durand) surprises both the cinematic and the actual audience by singing the theme song, "Take Everything but You," from a box. He then introduces his parents and himself while the cinematic audience applauds vigorously. Belle Baker (Momma Gibson), experienced vaudeville chanteuse, is worth watching except at those moments when, partially choking down her sobs, she sings. Best shot: the baseball game in. the vacant lot behind the theatre.

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