The New Pictures

The Light That Failed. Inspection of this picture can result only in a moral indictment against Kipling for releasing his noted novel to the cinema. Despite the selection of Jacqueline Logan and Percy Marmont for the leads, the picture misses fire. The wave of the author's emotion was spent in the transfer to pantomime.

To the Ladies. A good many plays come to the shrine of light comedy, but few are chosen. This is one of the few. Derived from a stage play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly (authors of Merton of the Movies, etc.), it retains most of the original sparkle. Credit is due to Director James Cruze and the capable cast which he assembled.

Flaming Youth endeavors to establish that young men and maidens wild are going up in the smoke of their own cigarettes. It contains all the rabble of trashy devices which cinema directors employ traditionally to indicate the younger degeneration, even to the midnight bathing party. All this is un-tunate, since the story of the socially rabid mother who on her deathbed persuaded her physician to write her spirit letters of her daughter's progress, is rather ingenious. She gave the girl the combination of the safe where the letters were to be left, hoping that the reports and reflections therein would fortify her philosophy against a jazz-mad world. Milton Sills and Colleen Moore make much of the leading roles.

The Mailman. A very small and energetic group of citizens are intent upon rousing the large and lethargic population to the rescue of its postal servants. Apparently mailmen are distressingly underpaid, overworked and ill provided for by pension. These points are all driven home in this film with the sounding mallet of melodrama. The purpose of the plan is obviously to provide campaign material for the emancipation of the mail slaves; by its banality it serves another cause equally well--the cause of those who detest the rank old-fashioned type of hiss and cur melodrama.

The Day of Faith. When the movies go into the pulpit they usually lack conviction. From screen pulpits around the country this picture will attempt to preach its sermon of love and regeneration in a Mission of the slums. Seeking the cold ice of logic, it attacks its prob-lem with snowballs dripping slush.