The New Pictures

Kismet (MGM) is the old romance, made famous by the late Otis Skinner, dressed up in some of the finest Technicolor yet filmed.

The Bagdad beggar who masquerades as a prince (played with characteristic swaggering gusto by Ronald Colman) is a professional adventurer whose resourcefulness and cunning are limited only by the extent of the script writer's familiarity with some of the old Douglas Fairbanks pictures. When the spurious prince sets out to seduce the queen of the dancing girls (Marlene Dietrich), he chucks her roguishly under the chin, calls her "my lady of the moonlight," and describes the lyric delights of life in his mythical kingdom. When he wishes to fool the ruthless Grand Vizier (Edward Arnold), he shoplifts the necessary royal satins, arrives in court prepared to pluck the richest plums in Araby.

Between times he turns magician, materializes birds out of blue smoke, hurls knives at royalty, effects a hairbreadth escape from the royal guards, marries off his pretty, dark-haired daughter (Joy Ann Page) to the handsome young caliph (James Craig), carries off Miss Dietrich for himself. Meantime Miss Dietrich, her renowned legs and lesser anatomy encased in a heavy layer of gold paint, performs a Hollywood nautch dance as politely voluptuous as the Hays office allows.

Kismet is luscious to look at. And more often than not its fantasy falls victim to its opulence. Old Bagdad looks suspiciously like the inside of a Hollywood nightclub.

But veteran Director William Dieterle has achieved a few moments of high whimsy. Best line: says the Grand Vizier explaining why it would be impolitic to depose Miss Dietrich as queen of the dancing girls, "She's a gift from Macedonia, and we can't offend Macedonia."

Sweet and Low-Down (20th Century-Fox) is at its best a field day for Benny Goodman, his band and his clarinet. At its worst it is a confused and sentimental story of the tribulations of a young trombonist trying to break into the name-band game.

King of Swing Goodman is giving his annual free concert at Chicago's Dearborn Settlement House. An excited urchin snatches Goodman's clarinet, is chased to a tenement home where his factory-worker brother, Johnny Birch (James Cardwell), is improvising on the trombone. Overheard by Goodman, Birch is hired for the band, goes on tour, gets vamped first by the band's singer, Pat Sterling (Lynn Bari), later, by Trudy Wilson (Linda Darnell), a luscious New York socialite. Birch tries to start his own band, fails miserably, goes back to a factory job. But Goodman and Trudy have not forgotten him. At regular intervals, Goodman & band offer welcome distraction from this quavery little plot with such tunes as Ten Days with Baby.

Best shot: a closeup of Goodman's fingers nimbly executing turns and runs on the clarinet. Best music: a few bars from the Mozart Clarinet Quintet.

Gypsy Wildcat (Universal) shows bosomy Maria Montez once more exerting her peculiarly effective brand of animal magnetism. But one thing is new in this overdressed spectacle. Instead of South Sea Islanders or Arabians, Miss Montez is surrounded by gypsies and feudal barons. However, she still weaves her torso in the same seductive fashion, eyes muscular Jon Hall with the same old sultry yearning. To show his gratitude, Hall swims moats. Most original use of Technicolor: a close-up in which the entire screen is pink with Miss Montez' heaving breast.

Maria Montez is rapidly becoming Hollywood's most proficient actress in this type of art. She plays at being a siren with the delight of a little girl playing house. So boundless is her joy in her work that even a cinecynic can hardly help catching some of it.

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