The New Pictures

The Affairs of Cellini (Twentieth Century). In The Girl from Missouri (TIME, Aug. 13), Lionel Barrymore admires a metal something with sails on a friend's desk. "That's a Cellini," says the friend. Says Barrymore: "I thought it was a boat."

Cinemaddicts who failed to understand this antique joke will not be historically enlightened by Twentieth Century's brief biography of the greatest goldsmith of the 16th Century. It exhibits Cellini only once in his studio and even then he works without enthusiasm. It is a portrait of him in his spare time, not as the artist but as the medieval playboy, dashing, sly and consecrated to misconduct. Magnificently acted by Frank Morgan, Fredric March and Constance Bennett, directed with delicacy by Gregory La Cava, The Affairs of Cellini is an uproarious and gracefully ribald costume play, rarely informative but almost always funny.

Alessandro, Duke of Florence (Morgan), decides to have Cellini (March) killed, for fighting with a Medici. The Duchess (Bennett) wants him to remain alive until he has finished some gold plates for her banquet to the Duchess of Milan. When the Duke calls on Cellini, the artist is making love to Angela, his model (Fay Wray). The Duke changes his mind, pardons Cellini, takes his model to his summer palace. Presently the Duchess visits Cellini's workshop. She commissions him to make a key, asks him to bring it to the summer palace. Cellini arrives with the key while the Duke is entertaining Angela. When the Duchess orders him out, he slaps her face, carries her toward a convenient sofa.

By the night of the banquet, Cellini's affairs have gotten out of hand. Alessandro, who wants Angela at the banquet, introduces her as Cellini's mistress. Furiously jealous, the Duchess puts poison in Cellini's wine. Cellini gives the wine to a courtier he dislikes, pretends to be dead until the Duchess, overcome with remorse, embraces him upon the floor. An accident restores Cellini to complete control of the scandalous situation. Angela calls the Duke by his pet name, causing the Duchess to perceive that her husband has been unfaithful. At the end of The Affairs of Cellini, the goldsmith and the Duchess are walking slyly out of the room, leaving the Duke and Angela to do as they think best.

A witty, handsome and preposterous adaptation of Edwin Justus Mayer's play, The Firebrand, The Affairs of Cellini would be a notable comedy if its only merit were Frank Morgan's performance as the Duke. Befuddled, stuttering, overcome by terror of his wife and incorrigibly concupiscent, Alessandro throughout The Affairs of Cellini never quite succeeds in finishing a single sentence.

One More River (Universal) investigates the domestic affairs of the Corvens--Sir Gerald (Colin Clive) who beats his wife with a riding crop; Lady Clare (Diana Wynyard) who leaves him in Ceylon--and young Tony Croom (Frank Lawton), who meets Lady Clare on the boat to London and falls violently in love with her. In London, Lady Clare and Tony Croom enjoy each other's company ecstatically but not improperly. Nonetheless, when Sir Gerald sets a detective on their trail, he finds them dozing together in an old Ford roadster. The result is an action for divorce which makes one of the most striking courtroom scenes of the season.

Barrister Brough (Lionel Atwill), putting Lady Clare on the stand, rolls his eyes with incredulity at her suggestion that, when Tony Croom called at her apartment, they did not go immediately to bed. To young Croom he says: "Do you expect me to believe that you and Lady Corven were not guilty of misconduct?" "We were not guilty, but I do not expect you to believe it," says the corespondent. All this ugly palaver comes to a climax when the jury retires. Sir Gerald gets his divorce. When last seen, Tony Croom and Lady Clare are sitting down to breakfast.

When One More River was completed last month, Censor Joseph Breen saw it and ordered changes. In the original version of the picture, Lady Clare left her husband because he horsewhipped her when naked; the courtroom scene contained even more intimate revelations than it does at present; Sir Gerald exhibited his perversities more clearly while forcing his way into his estranged wife's apartment and, in the next to last scene, Lady Clare antagonized young Tony Croom by proposing frankly that they misbehave. Although it is still concerned solely with the subject of adultery and although its principals are a sadist, a runaway wife and a peewee, it is an absorbing and intelligent divorce drama, worthy of the posthumously published novel by the late great John Galsworthy from which it was derived. R. C. Sherriff (Journey's End) wrote the adaptation; James Whale's direction conceals the fact that the story consists almost exclusively of conversation. In the role of Lady Clare's sister Dinny, a promising ingenue named Jane Wyatt makes her debut. Born at Campgaw, N. J., she is the only U. S. native in a cast topheavy with British expatriates. Good shot: the judge instructing Lady Clare not to be sarcastic to her husband's attorney.

Housewife (Warner Bros.) is a composite of all cinemas about the struggling young man (George Brent); the hard-working wife (Ann Dvorak), who prods him into success; the rise to riches; the other woman (Bette Davis); the projected divorce; the accident to a small child; the reconciliation. It contains some good performances including the able, nervous, acidly sexual one which is Miss Davis' stock-in-trade. Trite shot: a recurrently dripping faucet, to suggest the trials of living on $175 a month. Gag: "A crepe Suzette is nothing but a pansy pancake."

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