The New Pictures

The Prisoner of Zenda (Selznick International). From the day of its publication, 43 years ago, Anthony Hope's famed Ruritanian romance was a dramatic natural. Since 1895 The Prisoner of Zenda has swashbuckled over the stages of the English-speaking world. In 1922 Rex Ingram produced a silent cinema version. Last week Producer David Selznick gave this colorful hardy perennial the finest treatment it has ever had. Slicked up by Screenwriters Wells Root and John L. Balderston, well-cast, well-acted and beautifully staged, The Prisoner of Zenda will hardly hearten those who want Hollywood to skate out where the ice is thinner (see p. 33) but will certainly give cinemaddicts a rare good show for their money.

Ronald Colman, who can pick his self-assured way through the mazes of melodrama in fancy dress as no one else in Hollywood, doubles as Rudolf, uncrowned King of Strelsau, and his English cousin Rassendyll. Rudolf and Rassendyll, just to help out the plot, are dead ringers for each other. To foil a treasonous conspiracy led by Black Michael (Raymond Massey), Rassendyll impersonates his cousin, lets himself be crowned. He wishes more than ever that he hadn't when he meets Rudolf's fiancee, Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll). She falls in love with him quite legally, but he feels like a dog. Meantime the attractively villainous Rupert of Hentzau (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) has made everything more complicated by kidnapping the real king, holding him prisoner in the Castle of Zenda.

Rassendyll's job is to rescue Rudolf and hand over the throne, so that he can unbosom himself to Flavia. Before he gains his objective Colman proves himself an expert at fighting with tables, has a mighty brisk bout of swordplay with Douglas Fairbanks. Even the tried-&-true finale will seem to a reasonably sentimental audience as good-enough as old-time religion. Because there is a tiny hamlet in Canada (Zenda, Ont.) named in honor of The Prisoner of Zenda, far-fetching Selznick Publicity Man Russell Birdwell fetched Zenda's entire population (12) down to the Manhattan opening by plane. Few Zenda-ites had ever been outside their farming countryside: none had ever flown. In Manhattan they were lodged at a hotel, sent on a tour of the city, flown back two days later to their temporarily deserted village.

Baltic Deputy (Lenfilm). A universally noble cinema theme, of which the most prominent U. S. exponent is Paul Muni (Zola, Pasteur), is the life story of the great-hearted man of science. To be worth his epitaph in Russia, however, a scientist must also hew to the Marxian line. Such a one was Professor Arcady Klimentievich Timiriazev, sometime lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge, and professor of plant physiology at the Moscow State University. The explosion of the Russian Revolution, when he was 75, brought down his grey hairs not in sorrow but in grandeur to the grave, gave Soviet cinema a legend on which to base this richly human drama of an old scholar-hero.

While Mensheviks and Bolsheviks struggle for ascendancy, Professor Polezhayev (Nikolai Cherkassov) does not attempt to hide his sympathy for the Bolshevik minority, is boycotted by his students, backbitten by his colleagues, betrayed by Disciple Vorobiev (Otto Zhakov). To express his feelings the professor merely quotes Darwin: "Omne nisi discipulos" ("Heaven deliver me from pupils!"). Accused of being a German spy, he sits down to his birthday banquet alone with his wife.

But Polezhayev's ship comes in when Lenin gets to the helm. He sees his seven-year magnum opus on plant physiology put through the government-controlled press ahead of propaganda leaflets. When he lectures Baltic sailors on the color red, "the foundation of the life of plants," he gets a big hand and a valuable loaf of bread, is elected their deputy to the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin himself calls him on the phone, says he is proud of him. Old Polezhayev's heart begins to run down; the doctor warns him to rest, stay at home. But Polezhayev will not be downed. He breaks bounds, courts death by traveling across the city to say farewell to soldiers leaving for the front: "Goodby, Red fighters, the color red is invincible! It is the color not only of blood, it is the color of creation. It is the only life-giving color in Nature, filling the sprouting plant with life and giving warmth to everything in creation."*

Young Russian Character-Actor Nikolai Cherkassov tried 250 different makeups, had each screen-tested, before he was satisfied his 32 years added up to 75. Then he convinced skeptical and hitherto unknown Co-Directors Alexander Zarkhi, 32, and Joseph Heifetz, 28, that he was the only man for the role. A follower of the Stanislavsky method of living a part, he so thoroughly transformed himself into a tottering ancient that his friends were alarmed. Most successful Soviet film since Chapayev, Baltic Deputy has been seen by 80 million Russians since its release last spring.

In Russian, the word red also means good, jolly, pretty--as: she is a red girl.

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