The New Pictures

The Mighty (Paramount). By comparison with some of the other pictures Paramount has tailored to the measure of George Bancroft's gruff voice and burly body, this is pretty good. Except for one of the most elaborate war sequences ever filmed, the direction is slipshod and apparently hasty. The male bit-characters overact with such feverish zeal that their grimaces and articulations, designed as those of U. S. gangsters, would do equally well for Cockney racing touts. Peloponnesian traders or Old Scrooge.

The kernel of the plot is the struggle between old loyalties and new obligations of an underworldling who has been made a Police Chief because of heroism in the War. Typical dialog: "They've got you in a bag, Blake, you're sewed up, see? , That's right, Blake, they've got you where they want you. . . . Yeah?" Good shots: a fight photographed in a pitch-dark room by noises alone; Bancroft being persuaded to join the army.

Dynamite (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The sound device has been a great help to Cecil B. DeMille. His world of mythological characters in modern dress, violently evil or spotlessly good, his famous parties, his women in beautiful gowns, his mother-of-pearl bath tubs, his dancing girlies and colored confetti, were all ephemeral. Their life in your mind lasted only for the moment in which they fluttered before your eyes. Now that you can hear them too, they endure better. Dynamite, though ridiculous, so powerfully affects all nerves exposed to it that it will undoubtedly make money. A rich woman (Kay Johnson) who wants to bribe the wife of her lover to set him free cannot touch her inheritance until she is married. She hires a man about to be hanged for murder to be her bridegroom. Pardoned, he makes her stick to her deal. This is one corner of the vast, explosive, disorderly plot. Other corners: a cave-in at a coal mine; a parrot saying "I'm a good girl" and being told "You're the only one here."

Kay Johnson, daughter of Architect Thomas Robert Johnson, was an artistic, ambitious girl. She left Grew Seminary because she wanted to be an actress. Her diploma from an expensive dramatic school got her a job on the stage in R. U. R. She grew more assured in One of the Family and The Beggar on Horseback. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put her on a long contract because some official of the company had taken a liking to her husky voice when she was playing The Silver Cord in Los Angeles. Stencils of her biography contain the words ride, swim, tennis, piano. Her husband is Actor-Director John Cromwell.

Pointed Heels (Paramount). Although two competent magazine writers, Charles Brackett and John Van Alstyn Weaver, are responsible for this story, it is the same sort of backstage stuff that has been drearily done countless times. There is a showgirl, a rich boy, a stopped allowance, and Helen Kane singing babytalk. Pointed Heels departs from formula enough to weaken the formula but not enough to be original. Typical sequence: musical comedy producer testing his idea that his dance team will do better when they are drunk.

The Laughing Lady (Paramount). The late Jeanne Eagels was to have taken the role, now given to Ruth Chatterton, of the lady who laughs at fate. It is a drama about divorce, a little overkeyed as such dramas are apt to be, and a little antiquated in its assumption of society's hostility to divorced people, but still effective enough to deserve smoother direction and a less squeaky recording. A lifeguard is the hinge of the plot. Having pulled Miss Chatterton out of the water, and believing his colleague's assurance that she admires him, he muscles his way into her boudoir one night and brings her trouble. Best shot: How the laughing lady, meeting at a party the lawyer who, acting for her husband, heckled her at the divorce hearing, uses her wits to embarrass and fascinate him.

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