The New Pictures

The Lash of the Czar (Amkino). Propaganda, regardless of whether it is issued in a just cause or a stupid one, is always disagreeable. It is especially disagreeable when dished out to the public with an indigestible sugar-coating of Art. But although propaganda has spoiled for the U. S. public many pictures which, wildly praised by some critics for their scenic effects, were merely soap-box communism, propaganda does not spoil this story of a governor with a conscience.

He had ordered his soldiers to fire into a crowd of workers -- that was what the Governor (I. V. Kochalov) did not like to remember. The growth of his fear, of the indignation of the people, and the hatred toward him developing for personal reasons in the minds of a governess and a scab, were originally thought out by Leonid Andreyev, Russia's great, mad dramatist and story writer. Director A. Protozanov seems to feel with Andreyev that psychology is, in the long run, more important to art than politics. Shots -- the Emperor's aide-de-camp taking a dose of salts; a statue that loses its nose.

Actor I. V. Kochalov's real name is Shverubovitch. He has been with the Moscow Art Theatre since 1900, and toured the U. S. a few years ago in The Lower Depths, Three Sisters, The Brothers Karamazov and An Enemy of the People. Russians think his greatest part is the name role in Hamlet. The Soviet Government bestowed on him the cherished title "People's Artist of the Republic." Actor Kochalov adds to his large income by giving recitals in Moscow. His wife, Madame Litovtseva, is an actress and producer of the Moscow Art Company. Their son, Vadim, has been in the U. S. this season with Balieff's Chauve Souris. Actor Kochalov speaks no English, eats piles of pirojek* and drinks vodka freely without any sacrifice of his robust, Slavic dignity.

True Heaven (Fox). Generals signing armistices should work fast, should scribble their names as fast as they can, because--what about the firing squads, the fellows waiting for death in front of leveled rifles? The news has to get there in time. Suppose you are an English officer, and you fall in love with a beautiful girl, but when you are made a spy and sent to Germany you find she is a spy too, but on the other side, and she has to choose between you and her flag, and chooses her flag, as you want her to deep down in your heart, and then you're sentenced and she relents, but she can't change the sentence, and you are standing in front of those rifles--well, you want the news to get there in time. Silliest shot is Lois Moran cauterizing a cut in George O'Brien's chest.

The Flying Fleet (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). A lieutenant-commander (retired) in the U. S. Navy, one Frank Wead, wrote this script showing how naval aviators are made--Annapolis, then round-the-world cruise, then training school at Pensacola. Anita Page falls from an aquaplane into the plot. This air-photography is good, but Wings was better. The final sequence, in which one pilot dives at another on the field and afterwards rescues him when his plane falls into the Pacific, is about as true to life as a recruiting poster. The sallow aviator is Ramon Novarro.

The Redeeming Sin (Warner) is good comedy. That it was intended as a serious picture did not keep tolerant first-night audiences from chuckling happily at a cast of Parisian underworldlings who talk in the manner of the English nobility--rat Dolores Costello demanding "the jewels"; at Conrad Nagel who, told that his sweetheart has married in his absence, exclaims: "Then I'm too late!"; at a sister shaking a dying boy to bring him back to life; at the Hollywood conception of a Paris sewer; at a supposedly French priest reciting the Lord's Prayer with an Irish twang. Issued by the producers responsible for the development of the Vitaphone The Redeeming Sin reverts unaccountably to the shakiest adolescence of cinema technique.

*Little rolls filled with chopped, spiced meat.