New Pictures

Bardelys the Magnificent (John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman). In Which It Is Told How The Marquis de Bardelys, Favorite To His Majesty King Louis XIII, Wooed The Fair Lady Roxalanne de Lavedan On A Wager, And Won Her By True Love; And Also An Account Of How The Aforementioned Marquis de Bardelys Involved Himself In Sundry Cruel Mishaps The While Intent Upon His Naughty Errand, And Near Came By Losing His Young Head.

John Gilbert undertakes to show Douglas Fairbanks how to be a hero amongst daredevils, John Barrymore how to be a lover amongst women. His is an ironical failure. Though personally executing all the heroic acrobatics, he does not film real. One misses the "alive" manner that makes Actor Fairbanks' extravaganzas seem plausible, joyous adventure. Though perhaps foremost dream lover of the fair half of the U. S., he does not achieve the insolent elegance of a Don Juan like John Barrymore's. Hence, Bardelys is not magnificent.

Director King Vidor at times achieves heights: the love scene in a boat gliding under a veil of weeping willow leaves; the tantalizing suspense as the King's eccentric moods alternately delay and hasten his procession to the scene of execution; the camera angles at which the "Stunts" are filmed. Bardelys deserves its popularity, though it falls short of the best of its kind.

Midnight Lovers (Lewis Stone). No one would guess from the title that the heroine is a practical girl married to a nice but careless ace. The young bridegroom furnishes their apartment with War trophies, one of which explodes at an embarrassing moment while her husband is away, attending to the War. The ruin brings an interior decorator and a Bill, but the latter is not a little boy as the telegram led an eager husband to believe. Parenthood, deferred, synchronizes with more pacific interior decorations. All the explosions are not confined to the screen, for the audience went up in scattering laughs.

Take It From Me (Reginald Denny). A young man is at great pains to bankrupt his large department store, in order to rid himself of a fiancee with designs upon his money. Hence, floorwalkers go roller-skating along the aisles, a "million dollar" fashion show is wedged into the film. He loses the undesirable fiancee, almost loses the store, wins the beautiful stenographer. But this, Take It From Me, is nothing to go out of the way to encounter.

Syncopating Sue (Corinne Griffith, Tom Moore). A beautiful, not profound blonde wants to be a real actress in Cut Price Glory. Everybody knows what a girl must put up with to succeed in the profession nowadays. These theatrical managers . . . However, Sue does become an actress, at the last minute. Eddie Murphy forsakes the boat bound for Europe, they fade out of sight floating together on Eddie's drum in the middle of the harbor. They easily fade out of memory, too, though they are not hard to look upon while aflash before the eye.