The New Pictures

F, P. 1 (Gaumont-British). A perennial exhibit at air shows is the model of a floating airport to serve transoceanic planes. Invented 15 years ago, it continues to meet with practical objections. As background for a futuristic cinema it functions admirably. F. P. 1 is therefore exciting and at times interestingly realistic. Major Ellissen (Conrad Veidt) is an air hero riding the crest of his publicity. His best friend Captain Droste (Leslie Fenton) is sunk in the obscurity of an inventor's workroom. Ellissen uses his position to call attention to Droste's plan for a seadrome, persuades the Lennartz shipbuilding firm to construct it. Claire Lennartz (Jill Esmond) also falls a victim to his persuasiveness until he starts on a non-stop flight around the world. Then she switches her affection to Droste who sails off in his completed seadrome. When Ellissen reappears, he concludes that Claire and Droste have been deceiving him, ignores the plaintive bleating of the seadrome's S. O. S. At last he picks up Claire and flies to it. Sabotaged by a rival shipbuilding firm the seadrome is slowly sinking. Ellissen suggests to the crew that they take to the lifeboats. Then his noisy emotions again shift. He decides that the lovers really mean well by him, flies away to summon the proper mechanical help to save the seadrome.

Lacking the technical facilities of Hollywood studios the producers of F. P. 1 were forced to photograph their scenes against real backgrounds. Early scenes, purporting to show the construction of the sea-drome, were taken amidst the teeming activity of one of Germany's largest shipyards For the completed seadrome a floating dock was borrowed, effectively remodeled, towed out into the Baltic. There it did much to substantiate the arguments against real seadromes. In the first storm encountered it snapped its anchor cables. For the flying deck scenes, for which the dock was unsuited, the company chartered the dot-like island of Oie. With 4,000 tons of steel, 60 men and ten weeks time, a platform 1,000 ft. long and 450 ft. wide was built over the island and its 17 inhabitants. On the platform was deposit a fleet of airplanes and 3,000 extras. An ocean liner was necessary to carry the workers twice daily between Oie and the nearest hotel at Ruegen. No Marriage Ties (RKO). As this picture opens Bruce Foster (Richard Dix) is a sports reporter who, instead of covering the second Dempsey-Tunney fight, as he has been assigned to do, is blowing a toy pipe in a speakeasy. Discharged for incompetence, he gets drunk again the next night with better results. An advertising man who finds his conversation witty gives him a job. Presently Bruce Foster has a large suite of offices. He has mastered the technic of "fear copy," which he uses for the exploitation of worthless pastes and washes.

Like almost every hero in the cinema, Bruce Foster finds time, while building up his fortunes, for an elaborate sex life. First he enjoys a liaison with an English artist (Elizabeth Allen), to whom he explains his theory that marriage is a nuisance. Next he gets engaged to a slick and silvery cosmeticist (Doris Kenyon) until she grows too arduously possessive. When he breaks their engagement, the cosmeticist throws herself out a window and Bruce Foster goes back to his artist, who finds him in the speakeasy where he started. Somehow, the suicide of his fiancee has filled him with remorse for fooling the public. He has given up his job.

Muddled about what it is trying to say and sententious when it finds the answer, No Marriage Ties nonetheless manages to make Bruce Foster an interesting individual. It was an inspiration to have H. W. Hanemann write dialog for the story. His breathtaking puns, doubtless conceived in the hope of making Foster seem a wit rather than an addlepate, are the best strokes in the portrait. When Foster wakes up with a hangover and finds a girl in his apartment, he says: "Women are all soul and men are all heels." Another one comes when he has replaced pajamas with a suit: "The leper has changed his spats."

Mary Stevens, M.D. (Warner Brothers). "They say that being a doctor is a man's job. I'm wondering what a man would have done in a case like this." When Dr. Mary Stevens (Kay Francis) makes this comment, she has just used one of her hairpins to extract a diaper-fastener from an infant's larynx. It is one of the few incidents in the picture that really concerns the professional problems of a female physician. The rest of Mary Stevens, M.D. is about Mary Stevens' non-professional activities which are almost entirely unfortunate. She becomes infatuated with a ne'er-do-well surgeon (Lyle Talbot) who marries the blonde daughter (Thelma Todd) of a bigwig politician and deserts his serious interest in medicine for spasmodic practice in a city clinic. When Surgeon Andrews has tired of his wife and is planning a divorce, Mary takes up with him again and soon is expecting a baby; then Mrs. Andrews decides against the divorce and Mary Stevens has to go abroad for her confinement. A year or so later, on her way back to marry Andrews who has finally rid himself of his spouse, Dr. Stevens helps the ship's doctor treat a case of infantile paralysis. Her own child contracts the disease and dies before serum can be brought by airplane. She is just about to throw herself out of a window in despair when the janitor scampers in to say that his child has swallowed a safety pin. Pulling it out is what restores Mary Stevens' interest in existence.

Dedicated to the theory that cinemas should be timely, Warner Brothers doubtless found this one particularly apropos because Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recently bought the rights to Ann Vickers, Sinclair Lewis' study of a professional woman. Marred by signs of haste in production, it contains, like many recent Warner pictures, bits of first-class writing. Dr. Stevens' assistant Glenda (Glenda Farrell), an energetic girl with a warm heart and a sharp tongue, is an expertly invented character. So is the most consistent visitor at Dr. Stevens' clinic for children, a proudly despondent young Hebrew named Sanford (Sidney Miller) who refuses to be cheered by Dr. Stevens' pills and remedies. When she calls "Good night, he smiles and says: "What's good about it? All the benks are going to close." Another Language (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This vigorous if slightly over-acid adaptation of Rose Franken's play has the misfortune of being released only three months after the cinema version of The Silver Cord which it somewhat resembles in point of view if not in construction. But where The Silver Cord impeached only one miserable old lady for her exaggerated interest in her sons. Another Language shows the more complicated problems that can arise when an entire family of spineless offspring falls under the ugly domination of a stupid, whining matriarch. With two or three exceptions, old Mrs. Hallam (Louise Closser Hale), her sons and her daughters-in-law are as genuinely disagreeable a tribe as the cinema has ever dared exhibit to its audiences. Victor Hallam (Robert Montgomery) and his pretty young wife (Helen Haves) get back from their elopement just in time for one of the Hallam family's Tuesday soirees. Stella Hallam cannot help despising all her loutish, prying brothers-& sisters-in-law. Old Mrs. Hallam is disturbed because she senses Stella's antagonism. When young Jerry Hallam--defined as a maverick by the fact that he is studying architecture--begins taking an interest in Stella, it looks as though Victor's addled-headed loyalty to his clan would soon produce an ugly situation. He recovers his presence of mind just in time for a reconciliation with Stella, a few sharp words to his meddling relatives. Curiously, Another Language suffers from the same fault that was in the cinema version of The Silver Cord--overemphasis. As though he feared that his audiences would miss the point, Director Edward H. Griffith made all the minor Hallams monsters instead of people. At the two Hallam parties--in which most of the action of the play goes forward--the guests behave with such dismal lack of manners that it is hard to believe that anyone clever enough to marry Stella could fail to share her dismay. With this flaw, Another Language remains a sharp, dreadful and amusing picture of middle-class domesticity especially notable for a brilliant performance by Louise Closser Hale, who died last fortnight. Good shot: old Mrs. Hallam reviving from a faint when she hears the Victrola playing at the Victor Hallams' party.

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