The New Pictures

Sins of the Fathers. Actors who are small and thin seldom make suffering effective. No grandeur, one feels, is present in the woe that crushes small fry. But when a fellow as broad and thick as Emil Jannings, with prominent eyes from which huge tears ooze slowly, when such a fellow writhes in prison, ruined in business, betrayed by his wife, guilty of poisoning his son, one understands that only a sorrow truly vast could cause so strong a neck to bow.

Father Jannings' misfortunes are due to the Volstead Act which has transformed him from a happy restaurant-keeper to a rotgut-peddling millionaire. Brilliant performances by Zazu Pitts and Ruth Chatterton compensate for long passages in which Jannings' rather pompous efforts at creating character are allowed to slow up the story. Once he is even supposed to sing, but bad synchronization and mispronounced German suggest that a double was used. Best shot: the German waiters' annual dance.

Redskin is a color cinema concerned entirely with American Indians. Richard Dix has a better build than most real Indians and the red dye on his skin registers well for the color-camera. Navajo blankets, pueblos in fancy clothes, western skies, mountain & water are pretty to look at. The early sequences of the plot, when the small Indian boy fights passionately against the schooling white men thrust on him, are beautiful in action as well. Little by little the traditions of the old-fashioned western take the place of artistic control. There is the stolen bride, the discovery of oil, the race to file the claim. Best shot: the blind Indian woman recognizing her grandson.

The Bellamy Trial. After the usual short subjects which precede a feature film, audiences in theatres where The Bellamy Trial was shown last week witnessed a newsreel. First they saw the West Point Cadets, then a baby show, then U. S. battleships, and then the scene of a murder and the trial of the supposed murderers of one Mimi Bellamy, as reported by the newsreel photographer. Without a break, the newsreel moved on into the story, an unusual device which for a moment gave spectators confidence that the picture too would be unusual. They were disappointed. The people who came and went in the courtroom, with flashbacks to the scene of the crime, were the traditional mannequins of murder-fiction, and in spite of Monta Bell's careful directing, the story had lost somehow the vitality that made it effective as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post. Best shot: Betty Bronson, as a student journalist, listening to the trial.

The Wolf of Wall Street. Suspecting, probably correctly, that film audiences may not know much about the technique of the stockmarket, Paramount has kept as simple as possible this story about the big trader who is a sucker in love. The Wolf explains stratagems to his partners with a blackboard and pointer in a way that can be understood by anyone who can cut out a paper doll. That this will bore persons familiar with Wall Street methods is unlikely, however, for Mrs. Wolf's infidelities are effectively and seductively acted by Olga Baclanova. Best shot : Miss Baclanova biting her honey's ear. Olga Baclanova has the best singing voice in the cinema business. Her father, a Moscow artist, used to let her watch rehearsals of the Little Theatre there when she was ten years old. When she was 16 she was one of four chosen out of 400 applicants for admission to the Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio. Morris Gest brought her to the U. S. in the Moscow Art play, Carmencita and Her Soldier; when it was booked in Los Angeles she took a screen test. In California she played the role of the nun in the road company of The Miracle. She was in Forgotten Faces, The Street of Sin. Emil Jannings likes her.