The New Pictures

The Moral Sinner. This screen version of Leah Kleschna is likely to be viewed as a deliberately unfriendly act by Mr. William A. Brady, since his stage revival of this famed crook drama of 20 years ago is to be presented soon. It is not in the modern mystery vein of underworld plays, the only mystery being why the producers, after having bought the play for its previous standing and exploitation value, changed the name. The only explanation is that paradoxical titles are now in vogue on the screen, following the example of Playwright Shipman on the stage. Shipman might have written this cinema of the master thief's daughter who met the wealthy young man she was to rob, and turned from grand larceny to the grand passion. It is a machine-made picture, and Dorothy Dalton as Leah is only an effigy pulled around by a director.

The King of Wild Horses. A moderately worthy departure from the usual run of films, being a combination of Black Beauty with the forest fire of The Storm and with the waterfall scenes in any Universal picture. The scenes of the untamable equine lord of the plains plunging to rescue from the flood the man who saved him from the fire have been cleverly faked almost to the point of being Art. The horse who plays the leading role is so real that he makes the persons in the human story look like cinema actors.

Which Shall It Be? A valiant essay at showing that a sentimental picture can be real and free from the sticky molasses variety of emotion. It deals with two elderly parents, facing the poorhouse as an alternative to letting a wealthy man adopt one of their seven children in return for a handsome indemnity. After finding it hard to decide which child they shall give up, they finally choose one. Then find they can't sell her into benign bondage after all. They get the rich man's check anyhow, as might be expected.

The Breaking Point. An often impressive transcription of Mary Roberts Rinehart's book and play about amnesia, though it will leave the average witness at times in the same mental haze as the hero. Matt Moore gives a convincing portrayal of the young man who kills a rival in a sordid brawl, forgets his past and achieves respectability, only to have the long arm of the law reach out to yank him back to degradation. Nita Naldi as the siren who twice tries to wreck him is too corpulent to vamp anyone but a Turkish sultan.