The New Pictures

Trapeze (Harmonic-film), a German talkie with English subtitles, was directed by E. A. Dupont, who made Variety. His penchant for oblique photography is appropriate for aerial acrobatics like the trick called "Salto Mortale," which the three principal personages in this picture perform at frequent intervals. "Salto Mortale" is a giant swing on a revolving platform followed by a jump to a trapeze that has to be released by a ground-lever at exactly the right moment. It is performed by Marina (Anna Sten) and Jim (Reinhold Bernt), an arrogant animal-feeder who volunteers for the act to show Marina how good he is. Jim's best friend, Robby (Adolph Wohlbrueck), pulls the lever. You are aware that presently Jim will fall. When he does, Marina marries him out of sympathy. Robby takes Jim's place in the "Salto Mortale" and Jim takes Robby's job with the lever. When Marina and Robby fall in love, it complicates the act. Swinging on their high platform, they are sure that Jim, suspecting that he has lost his wife as well as his job, will one night forget to pull the lever. Presently he does forget.

To the reporters who met her when she arrived in Manhattan last fortnight, Anna Sten said, "How do you do? Yes. No. Maybe." She was not trying to be cryptic. They were the only English words she knew. If she can learn quickly enough, she will be Ronald Colman's leading lady in Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Brothers Karamazov. Producer Goldwyn saw her in the Tobis production Karamazov, later in Tempest, with Emil Jannings. He cabled his agent to give her a contract if she could learn English quickly. Actress Sten thought it would take about two weeks.

Brisk, blonde and beauteous, Anna Sten's confidence was not entirely unreasonable. When she arrived in Hollywood last week it was the beginning of her third cinema career. When her father, a Russian ballet master, died, Anna, then 12, helped to support the family in Kiev. At 15 she got into the Soviet Film Academy. Three years later, Sovkino sent her to Berlin to make pictures in Russian. Her work in Karamazov got her a UFA contract. She made two pictures in German, then a French version of Karamazov after studying French for three weeks. To convince Producer Goldwyn she took a Berlin screen test--a bit from Gloria Swanson's role in Indiscretion, which she recited in English. Anna Sten, 22, came to the U. S. accompanied by her German husband (Dr. Eugen Franke) but not by her Russian dog, Drushka ("Little Friend''). Said she (in German): "The night I was leaving he [Drushka] ran away to keep a rendezvous. . . . Now he must come by the next boat, all alone. I am very sad about him."

Letty Lynton (MGM). The heroine of this picture further enlightens cinemaddicts on the pains of promiscuity. Letty Lynton (Joan Crawford) not only has lovers. She has one who is patently the lowest grade of Latin American, and she kills him with a dose of poison. So rude and forceful are his amorous tactics that she has the full sympathy of all decent members of the audience. She is driven to distracted crime by her high-minded affection for a young Bostonian (Robert Montgomery). Her low Latin despises this affection, threatens to cut it short. Letty Lynton's misdemeanors are committed with complete impunity. She is saved from the consequences of committing murder when Robert Montgomery goes into court and commits perjury in a tactful, heroic way.

The Edinburgh trial, in 1857, of one Madeleine Smith (which was also the inspiration for Dishonored Lady, played by Katharine Cornell on the Manhattan stage) was the source of Letty Lynton. Whatever evil effect the picture may have on the behavior of its patrons will be increased by the fact that it'is a well-constructed, well-written melodrama which avoids the stencils of its type. Nils Asther is a blonde athlete from Stockholm Yet he wears fuzzy sideburns and speaks in such a way as to be the epitome of Latin menace. There is another immoral character m the story. Letty's mother (May Kobson), a misanthropic old lady who says: ''I have learned to do quite well without human affection."

Roadhouse Murder (RKO) has at least a novel plot. The hero is an unsuccessful newspaper reporter. Accidentally present at the scene of a murder, he sees a chance to make himself comparatively rich and famous by: 1) planting incriminating evidence against himself 2) getting arrested for the crime, 3) writing his own account of the trial for his newspaper 4) introducing, at the last minute evidence that will exonerate him and catch the real culprits off their guard. His plan fails in the last detail. The evidence-- a purse containing the name of the murderer's companion--is stolen and young Chick Brian (Eric Linden) seems likely to be chairman at an electrocution His fiancee (Dorothy Jordan), whose father is police chief, can do nothing to help him. He is saved finally by an unlikely combination of circumstances beginning when the real murderer arouses the resentment of his mistress by kicking her off a chair.

With a lively story and a few well-directed scenes in which Dorothy Jordan blubbers in affecting treble. Roadhouse Murder is passable melodrama. Most obvious of its flaws would have been corrected had Director J. Walter Ruben persuaded Eric Linden to deliver a few of his lines without a pathetic quaver.

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