The New Pictures

The Last Edition was doomed to dislike by the newspaper commentators. It is a newspaper melodrama done without regard to verity. Possibly it is not so utterly unlike journalism as society pictures are unlike society, or Parisian underworld pictures are unlike Montmartre. Rich people and French cocottes have no opportunity and probably small inclination to complain, but not so the critics when they dislike the distorted version of their colleagues. Furthermore it was pretty stilted melodrama.

The Eagle. Rudolph Valentino has pulled himself successfully out of the mud. The last drying flakes of his tour in favor of Mineralava Beauty Clay have disappeared, and he is once more a foremost favorite of the screen. This latest picture is among his best. It was adapted from the novel of Pushkin, and treats of a Russian youth who (figuratively) thumbed his nose at the Tsarina and considerably displeased the royal household. He becomes a Cossack and makes love, without too much exaggeration, to Vilma Banky.

Old Clothes. Jackie Coogan is still one of the greatest of actors, but his stories are getting just a trifle tiresome. This latest, perilously parallel to The Rag Man, shows him as a boy business man and a lover's confidant. Yet any picture with Jackie Coogan is good entertainment, provided it moves.

Rose of the World. This somewhat far flung title is tacked to an ordinary movie story of a couple of unhappy marriages. One of the wives and one of the husbands were in love but were impeded, chiefly through their own stupidity, from getting married. Therefore reels of unhappiness until the other wife rode a spritely horse and the other husband fell off a cliff.

The Ancient Highway. Jack Holt and Billie Dove wasted several weeks in making this one. It is a preposterously usual and unusually preposterous melodrama of the logging countries.