The New Pictures

Wonder Bar (Warner) is the Grand Hotel of musical pictures. It delineates occurrences in an elaborate Paris night club run by Al Wonder (Al Jolson), where a lovely patroness (Kay Francis) bored with her husband, a depraved dancer (Ricardo Cortez) and his svelte partner (Dolores Del Rio), an impoverished financier and the eccentric but high-spirited host involve themselves in the emotional entanglements customarily reserved for one room melodrama.

The room in Wonder Bar is one of the most versatile yet employed as a cinema set. It gives the appearance of containing innumerable tables, an extensive bar, a sunken dance floor, and an enormous stage. Mirrors and revolving floors enable Dance

Director Busby Berkeley to make three chorus girls out of one and to turn a waltz routine into something that resembles a panorama painting of an army on the march. Songs in Wonder Bar are superior to those which Al Jolson sang in its stage version in Manhattan four years after he made the first successful talkie. The Jazz Singer. Most tuneful of them are "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule." "Why do I Dream those Dreams." In "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" the rostrum in the Wonder Bar represents everything from a Negro cabin on the canebrake to a night club in Paradise with Gabriel performing on a saxophone. Like other recent Warner Brothers productions. Wonder Bar contains more than its quota of obscenity.

Death Takes a Holiday (Paramount). The hero (Fredric March) of this fantasy makes his first appearance as a garden variety of hobgoblin. A translucent shadow with bad manners and a bass voice, he calls on Duke Lambert de Catolica. announces that he is "the point of contact between life and immortality'' and suggests that he join the Duke's house party for a few days, in disguise. When he reappears, Death is wearing the monocle and white breeches of a minor Mediterranean prince. He amuses himself more than the Duke's other guests with macabre little quips like "I have known many four bottle men . . ." and ''Considering your distinction and age it is surprising that Fate has not introduced us before." There are moments of embarrassed silence around the ducal dinner table as Prince Sirki's behaviour grows increasingly enigmatic. The most painful arrives when the Duke has to reveal the true identity of his guest. This is after the Prince has made it clear that he is in love with chubby Grazia (Evelyn Venable), the dreamy fiancee of young Corrado de Catolica. When he becomes a shadow again at the end of three days, Prince Sirki takes Grazia with him, wrapped in his cloak. The impossibility of assaying the philosophic content, if any, of the play by Alberto Casella from which this picture was adapted does not diminish the charm of Death Takes a Holiday. It remains a serious poetic riddle, imperfect, thoughtful, delicately morbid.

The Mystery of Mr. X (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). By a coincidence, an engaging young cracksman (Robert Montgomery) chooses to open a safe and steal a diamond at the very moment a homicidal maniac is stabbing a policeman in the street outside. In an effort to dissuade a shrewd inspector (Lewis Stone) from arresting him for the murder, one of a series which is decimating the police force, it becomes necessary for the cracksman not only to try to catch the maniac but also to fall in love with the daughter (Elizabeth Allan) of the chief of Scotland Yard (Henry Stephenson). Adapted from Philip MacDonald's excellent detective story The Mystery of the Dead Police, The Mystery of Mr. X is what a cinema detective romance should be--plausible, bloodcurdling, well-dressed and absurd.

Dark Hazard (First National) again displays the adaptability of W. R. Burnett's novels to the screen and the virtuosity of Edward G. Robinson for low-life parts. In Dark Hazard, he is first discovered cashing $20,000 worth of pari-mutuel tickets at a horse track, and fervently hoping that "they keep making this stuff." Soon, however, he is on the other side of the cashier's window at an Ohio racecourse. He falls in love with a smalltown girl (Genevieve Tobin), swears off gambling 'and takes to clerking in a shoddy Chicago hotel. When the gambling fever again infects him they go to California, where he interests himself in dog races. To one dog, Dark Hazard, a licorice-black racing greyhound with appealing eyes, he loses his heart. His wife goes back to Ohio and a respectable life. After some ups & downs, Robinson, Dark Hazard (whom he bought for $25) and an old friend named Val (Glenda Farrell), continue down the shabby but pleasant groove he should never have left. Amusing sequence: Actor Robinson struggling with himself to leave a Chicago gaming hall where he is making money, get home to his waiting wife. Born Emanuel Goldenberg in Bucharest 41 years ago. Edward G. Robinson arrived in the U. S. at the age of 10. He got an M. A. from Columbia, thought of being a lawyer. His first Broadway appearance was on a soapbox urging the election of William Randolph Hearst for mayor. Cinemagoers date his theatrical success from his appearance in Burnett's Little Caesar in 1931. Years before that Actor Robinson was ably doing small parts for the Theatre Guild. In 1915 he married an actress named Gladys Lloyd who has largely managed his career. The urge to create musically tortures him. He buys all sorts of mechanical reproduction instruments, sometimes tries to create compositions by pasting pieces of player piano rolls together.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.