The New Pictures

Dracula (Universal). Director Tod Browning, who had charge of the best Lon Chaney pictures, has a talent for creating macabre atmosphere by the use of "interiors." He is a director who never, if he can help it, photographs a scene out of doors and then only at night or in a fog. Bram Stoker's famous novel about a vampire who survives hundreds of years after his death by drinking human blood and who is killed at last by a professor who drives a stake through his heart as he lies in his coffin provides ideal material for Browning. He has done a good job with it, especially with the settings in a madhouse and in cellars. Bela Lugosi, who made a success in Dracula on the Manhattan stage, takes the leading role. As the scenes flash in twilight, accompanied by such noises as wolves howling, bats screeching, and women screaming, Lugosi, in the form of a huge bat, flits in and out of the windows of Carfax Abbey, close to which most of the action takes place. Dracula is an exciting melodrama, not as good as it ought to be but a cut above the ordinary trapdoor-and-winding-sheet type of mystery film. Silliest sound: Helen Chandler's feeble soprano chirrup uttered repeatedly as an indication of superhuman fear.

Bright Lights (First National). Made a year ago, Bright Lights was put on the shelf, presumably because too many other pictures just like it were being released. Unfortunately, seasoning has only helped to shelve it permanently. Its backstage plot, its industriously plugged songs, its imperfect sound-recording, its imperfect technicolor, already are relics of a dead past in picture making. Dorothy Mackaill is good looking and Frank Fay fairly funny. The plot--a show girl who is about to marry a millionaire when her past, in the person of Noah Beery, turns up and threatens her happiness--is good enough to suggest that Bright Lights would have held its own with the competition of last year. Most tedious shot: Frank McHugh as a drunken reporter.

Stolen Heaven (Paramount). Nancy Carroll wears pretty clothes and struggles with stupid dialog, with weak direction by George Abbott, and with a story by Dana Burnet that might have been impressive, if thoroughly and patiently dealt with, but that turns out badly. A young man (Phillips Holmes) who has held up a radio factory meets a discouraged girl in a city street late at night. She hides him in her room and, liking each other, they make a bargain. They decide to go to Florida to spend the $20,000 he has stolen; when it is gone, they will commit suicide. In Palm Beach, Holmes still wants to kill himself but the girl wants to live. When police come to arrest the robber she has obtained some more money from another admirer and thought of a way out of their difficulties. The picture is bearable because of its handsome settings and because it is well acted. Best sequence:

Nancy Carroll going to the casino for some fun on what she believes is her last night on earth.

Nancy Carroll began her dramatic career hanging from a chandalier at the

Winter Garden, Manhattan, in the Passing Show of 1023. She was born on Tenth Avenue, Manhattan, and her real name is Nancy La Hiff; she worked into show business by smart acting in amateur nights at vaudeville theatres. "Ducky," protested Mrs. La Hiff nightly, "is it necessary for you to kick your limbs so high in Mr. Shubert's shows?" Nancy Carroll continued to kick high. After three weeks in the chorus she was given a leading role. She made her way in Hollywood because she was intelligent. She is married to Playwright John Kirkland (Frankie & Johnnie) and has a four-year-old daughter. Few girls from Tenth Avenue have learned to talk and behave as smartly as she can. Last week she was in Cuba, planning soon to go to Europe, where she has never been. Some of her pictures: The Shopworn Angel, The Devil's Holiday, Laughter.

Mutterliebe, Heimatsklange, Gretel und Liesel (German Independent Companies). In cities like Manhattan, St. Louis, Chicago, the German population is large enough to give capacity business to the little theatres which show such all-German pictures as these. Mutterliebe is a story of mother-love overlaid with Teutonic sentiment but built with less logic than most German stories; it tells of a woman so anxious to give mother love that she kidnaps a little girl. Heimatsklaenge is a travelog showing pretty views of Rotenburg, Dinkelsbuehl, Wertheim, and Fussen; it is synchronized with German folk music. Gretel und Liesel is a good comedy about two sisters, one neat & kindly, the other shrewish, with a plot to give the kindly one a dowry.

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