New Pictures

Kid Boots (Eddie Cantor). In Eddie Cantor's defection, the stage loses more than the cinema gains, the difference being written on the deposit side of Mr. Cantor's check book in round numbers. As for the picture itself, the plot concerns a certain Kid Boots who is invited to tarry awhile in the country club environs because he chanced on a scene bearing upon an important divorce case. Questions :

(1) How funny is Mr. Cantor as a cinema comedian?

(2) How many thrills out of three people balanced on the edge of a beetling cliff?

(3) How long can the audience gaze upon Billie Dove and Clara Bow without becoming tired?

Answers:

(1) Not very funny.

(2) About six good ones.

(3) A long, long time.

The Sorrows of Satan (Adolphe Menjou). David Wark Griffith, director of The Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East, the man who guided to stardom Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Carol Dempster, the man generally hailed as the "old master" of the cinema, has attempted the sublime. The first few minutes of The Sorrows of Satan do suggest a Miltonic vastness, but shortly thereafter the film settles down to a good little "heart interest" story about love in the tenements. Here, midst Dickens-like poverty and squalor, a pathetic romance almost blossoms into a wedding (Carol Dempster, Ricardo Cortez). At just the wrong moment, with a fierce fanflare of natural phenomena, the ominous Satan (Adolphe Menjou), looking immensely urbane and a wee bit weary, overshadows the scene, lures away the unfortunate bride-groom-to-be from the still more unfortunate bride-to-be. Thereafter, come wine, women, and song in hellish profusion--and especially Lya de Putti, vampire extraordinaire. After a little of this, Satan chases the poor young man back to his poor sweetheart and the tenements, evidently to earn that "hour at the gates of Paradise'' which frequent subtitles guaranteed for every soul that resisted him. The Griffith love scenes are always poignant, original, intense; the photography masterful; he seems to make his actors do better than their best. But his screen story, at most, is a good little "morality" play that unfortunately aspired to Satanic grandeur.