The New Pictures

Sei Tu L'Amore? (Italotone). Made in Hollywood by an Italian company, with a cast recruited from Italian actors and actresses living there, this picture differs from the ordinary export translations of U. S. films because it presents an original story, designed particularly for Italo-Americans. Technically it is inferior to Hollywood standards; the dialog in Italian is not well recorded, but it was received with enthusiasm last week by playhouses in the Italian districts of U. S. cities. The comedy is built around a young girl whom three elderly bachelors keep from committing suicide. They buy the dressmaking establishment where she used to work and set her up as boss. In the end she marries a young architect. Best role--Enrico Armetta as one of the three old playboys. The hero is Alberto Rabaghati, the heroine Luisa Caselotti.

Pictures for Italians are made in the U. S. because there are no ranking Italian producing companies. Some 70% of the 2,500 cinema theatres in Italy are supplied by U. S. products. Yet once Italy was powerful in the cinema. Italian-made Quo Vadis? started in 1913 a fashion for historical spectacles. Poet Gabriele D'Annunzio wrote and directed Cabria. But since 1916 native Italian cinemas have deteriorated. Premier Mussolini has his private theatre, equipped for talkies. For a while he banned all cinemas in foreign tongues. Later he changed this edict, permitting foreign talk if the picture was musical comedy or operetta.

Cinema audiences in Italy must endure constant playing of Fascist anthems. Few pictures are released without classical titles. One announced in Rome as The Odyssey of Charlie Chaplin turned out to be the original Paramount, Tillie's Punctured Romance. Though Italians are partial to German imports, an observer for Cinema reports that when Emil Jannings in Othello was shown at the Royal Opera in Florence, at one performance the audience consisted of six people.

Tol'able David (Columbia). This was a hard assignment for Director John Blystone in one way and an easy one in another: his product would be judged in comparison with the silent version Richard Barthelmess starred in a few years ago; but he could use the Barthelmess version as a model for the talkie. The new Tol'able David is an effective, bucolic melodrama, not handled well enough to keep the dialog from slowing it up but finely acted by Richard Cromwell. The story is Joseph Hergesheimer's anecdote of a frustrated young mountaineer's struggle against the enmity of a group of brutal backwoods halfwits. Most of the esthetic credit, belongs to Cameraman Teddy Tetzlaff for his presentation of hill scenery.

The Dancers (Fox). When Phillips Holmes finds his boyhood sweetheart (Lois Moran) teaching school in a small French town, she confesses to him that she has not lived up to the inscription she once wrote on her photograph: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more." Holmes, however, has been true to her. A fair thematic idea knits up this otherwise silly and incoherent picture. All is based on an old story of Sir Gerald Du Maurier. All is distinctly British in tone and notable only for the first appearance in talking pictures of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, famed British oldtimer. Now 65, she takes the part of a stern aunt. Most expected shot: Holmes beating up his rival.

Brothers (Columbia). The play of the same name was designed as a vehicle for Bert Lytell's return to the Manhattan stage last year and had a good run. It is better as a picture than it was as a play because the mechanics of the modern camera help Bert Lytell to play his dual role of twin orphans--one adopted by a family of wealth, the other by a washwoman. Instead of making a quick trip offstage before coming on as the older brother, he now looks at himself, argues with himself, hits himself, picks himself up, carries himself off the set. Most monotonous shot: Mr. Lytell's profile.

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