The New Pictures

We Live Again (Samuel Goldwyn). When he was considering Tolstoy's Resurrection for blonde and beauteous Anna Sten's second U. S. appearance, Producer Samuel Goldwyn was reminded that it had been made before, with Lupe Velez and Dolores Del Rio. Said he: "It has not been made until I make it." His explanation: both earlier productions failed to stress sufficiently Resurrection's social message.

Cinemaddicts, familiar with the story of We Live Again, should be pleasantly amazed at the skill with which one of Hollywood's most extravagant producers interprets Tolstoyan Socialism. Instead of being, like the two previous versions, the old tale of young love reunited, We Live Again is comparatively faithful to its Russian original. In the earlier sequences where young Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov (Fredric March) goes to church with Peasant Katusha Maslova (Anna Sten), before seducing her in a greenhouse. Director Rouben Mamoulian allows his fondness for his scene to delay his story. Later, when Dmitri, a bearded patrician in the jury box, again meets Katusha, a prostitute accused of murder, the class antagonism which put them where they are is carefully accented to make more impressive Dmitri's gestures of remorse. The climax, in which he gives away his lands and accompanies Katusha to prison in Siberia, possesses most of the impact Tolstoy purposely wrote into it.

That Producer Goldwyn 's version of Resurrection seems sincere is due mainly to his leading lady. When, after a year spent in publicized seclusion, Anna Sten appeared in Nona last winter, critics deplored the picture, reserved judgment on its star. We Live Again exhibits her where she belongs, in Russia, and should cause her to be classed with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich as an importation who deserves all the attention she can get. She speaks better English than she did in Nona, looks a little thinner, acts as well. Good shot: Katusha drinking vodka in jail.

The St. Louis Kid (Warner) shows James Cagney receiving a cuff on the jaw from his leading lady instead of giving her one. Because he was tired of punching with his fists in pictures. Cagney suggested a variation to Director Ray Enright. In The St. Louis Kid he wears bandages on his hands, butts his way through brawls with his head. In other respects, the picture is standard Cagney entertainment, a rapid, realistic fantasy about a truck-driver who wants a quiet weekend in the country. Best shot: Cagney being welcomed into a village jail by a warden who loves company.

Wednesday's Child (RKO). Bobby Phillips (Frankie Thomas), like the heroine of Little Friend (TIME. Oct. 29), is "full of woe" as a result of his parents' matrimonial troubles. His playmates tease him about the man seen kissing his mother (Karen Morley) in a parked car. Dreaming wretchedly of their taunts, he wakes to hear his father (Edward Arnold) slapping his mother. After protesting that she regrets having borne a son, she leaves the house for good.

After the divorce, Bobby lives miserably with his mother and her new husband, looking forward to the summer he is to spend with his father. When it arrives, he finds that his father is also planning to remarry. Bobby promptly goes into a decline which is arrested only when, at the suggestion of the doctor, he is packed off to military school. And here the picture, taken from last season's play of the same name, goes flabby and pulls its punch. On the stage Wednesday's child was condemned to a forlorn, embittered adolescence. On the screen his father decides to stay single and take Bobby home to live with him.

Now 12, Frankie Thomas, an able and experienced child actor, was taken to Hollywood to play the same role he had in the stage production. So well did he do it that his reward was a contract that will run until he goes to college. He and Edward Arnold, in their scenes together, give Wednesday's Child a conviction it lacks at most other times. Good shot: Bobby learning from a cynical schoolmate the advantages of having four parents.

The Captain Hates the Sea (Columbia). This picture produces one glimpse of a superb character during that moment when Captain Helquist (Walter Connolly) remarks: ''Oh. how I hate the sea! . . . Let me tell you. I'm waiting for the day when a ship of mine is about to sink. Not only will I not go down with my ship but I'd like to see any blatting, sheepheaded passenger get in the first lifeboat ahead of me."

But from that moment on the captain is more or less forgotten and his ship keeps afloat with its cargo of stock-company characters: 1) Steve Bramley (John Gilbert), a drunken writer, 2) a team of crooks (Helen Vinson and Fred Keating) with a fortune in stolen bonds, 3) a detective looking for the crooks (Victor McLaglen), 4) a Central American revolutionist (Akim Tamiroff), 5) a comedy boatswain (Leon Errol). 6) a gentleman (John Wray) who is ashamed of his wife's past (Wynne Gibson).

It would take more than names to make entertainment of The Captain Hates the Sea. Part of the trouble is that the story lacks integration and part of it that Lewis Milestone's stylized direction lacks tempo. This picture seems to prove that Columbia, the sensation of the industry with three straight smashes (It Happened One Night, Twentieth Century, One Night of Love), can sometimes go wrong.

Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (Reliance). One way to vary the Grand Hotel formula is to make the scene a boat. Another is to add a few songs and dances. The producers of Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round did both. Then, exhausted by creative effort, they forgot to establish any relation between songs and plot. The result is a nonsensical hodgepodge concerning a group of typical Grand Hotel characters (Nancy Carroll, Gene Raymond et al.) on the same liner with a troupe of radio performers (Jack Benny, Mitzi Green et al.). Best shot: Mitzi Green, now playing the part of a grown-up young lady, imitating George Arliss.

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