The New Pictures

Ashes of Vengeance. Bad though it is, the title of this picture--Norma Talmadge's latest--has one redeeming feature. It seems to have attracted all of the bad taste and cheap sensationalism scattered around the Schenck studios and vented them in one trite expression. The rest of the production is consistently tasteful and enormously worth while.

The large news of a Norma Talmadge picture should concern Norma Talmadge. Accordingly--she is exceedingly beautiful and a moderately good actress. She can command and she can weep. She has a large constituency. For them it may be said that in Ashes of Vengeance she is a little better than usual.

The real protagonist of the production does not appear. He allows his work to register his virtuosity. He is Stephen Gosson, the architect who designed the sets. The costumer, one William Israel, is but a step behind him. Between them, with the help of a good director and a few thousand broadswords, they have constructed a thing of permanent beauty. Gothic architecture is, in the main, their medium; their background, the flashing pageantry of 16th Century France. So painstaking is their detail, so accurate their reproduction, so beautiful their finished product, that the French Chamber of Deputies has requested a copy of the film for the historical archives of the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.

The story tells of a princess. Into her lonely castle comes a nobleman (Conway Tearle) in the guise of a servant--bound by oath to her brother's service-- for a term of years. Shortly thereafter comes the sinister Due de Tours (Wallace Beery) seeking her love. How she repulsed him and how the servant rescued her from his drunken embrace comprise the burden of the plot. There is abundant death and sword play. There is sentiment and spectacle. There is an absence of pretense.

Little Johnny Jones. Of course, some day some producer with nihilistic tendencies will present a racehorse story in which the hero doesn't win. His losing will be due to the success of plots concocted by the vicious opposing owner. His girl, forthwith, will desert him and his horse refuse to recognize him socially.

None of these things happen in Little Johnny Jones. Everything moves so smoothly on schedule that the happy ending is simply the dull finish.