The New Pictures

The Doomed Battalion (Universal). This is the first important effort to put into a picture the unbreakable deadlock so long maintained by the Austrian and Italian armies in the Dolomite Alps. The picture is that of a very different war from the one of the Western Front, a war white and unreal in which avalanches, blizzards and mountain peaks are tactical considerations. Unreal, but its very unreality, magnificently photographed, is part of its power.

Mount Collalto, key position of the battle front, is held by Austrian troops. The Italians capture the Austrian town at the base of the mountain, but their many attacks upon and bombardments of the peak are futile. Without its capture they are powerless to advance. In desperation they undertake to bore under the peak to dynamite it. The defending Austrians learn of the Italian strategy but dare not relinquish their position. They listen to the sound of the drilling beneath them, not knowing when they will be blown to bits. Florian (Luis Trenker) is an Austrian soldier, a native of the village below, and deeply in love with the wife from whose arms war has torn him.

He is sent to attempt to ascertain the hour set for the Italians' explosion. Once in the village he is undecided whether to remain with his wife or return to the almost certain death of his comrades.

The picture might have been great had its characterization been more carefully attended to, but it has quite enough to recommend it. Tala Birell, a Viennese who played with Max Reinhardt in Berlin, is competent in her role as Florian's wife. Good shot: a night barrage upon the snow-covered mountain.

Symphony of Six Million (RKO). The warm, prolix emotion which Fannie Hurst put into her story about a young Jewish doctor on Manhattan's East Side is strongly translated in this picture. Felix (Ricardo Cortez), humbly set up with a backroom for an office, finds few paying patients. He has long hard hours at a neighborhood clinic. It is his idea of happiness, however, to know that he is relieving a little the suffering he has seen everywhere about him since childhood. His fame but not his wealth grows until, realizing a debt to his family, he becomes a fashionable doctor with offices on Park Avenue. He becomes dazzled by his own glitter. When his father dies under his hands, the blow is too much. He loses his nerve, only recovers it back on the dirty East Side, operating on the woman he loves (Irene Dunne).

What gives the picture its value is the way in which the strewn foreground of streets and people becomes a constant, potent presence in the life of the doctor's family. Tempo suffers when the actors in the story pause to explain themselves; but their emotions, chiefly the emotion of deep family love, are honestly and brilliantly presented. Ricardo Cortez, hired for his part when he explained that he was no Spaniard but a Jew, gives a sensitive and humble portrayal. Max Steiner's musical score is particularly interesting when it blends with and loses itself in the murmuring of the streets. Symphony of Six Million is the second output from RKO since young David Selznick took charge of its production (TIME, Nov. 16). Like "The Lost Squadron," it indicates that he well knows what he is about.

Devil's Lottery (Fox). Simultaneously last week were released Elissa Landi's third novel and her fifth cinema. She had reason to be pleased with both. The book, House for Sale (Doubleday, Doran --$2.00) is a competent study of a female musician who gave up her career in favor of matrimony and three children. No brilliant achievement for a professional novelist, it is probably the best fiction ever perpetrated by a cinemactress. The picture, Devil's Lottery, less sensational than The Yellow Ticket in which she last performed, is a glib and interesting melodrama in which Miss Landi performs far better than any other female novelist in the U.S. would have been able to do.

The plot of Devil's Lottery is really the invention of one of its characters, Lord Litchfield (Halliwell Hobbs) who, when his horse King Midas wins the Derby, invites all the people who have held winning lottery tickets to a party at his house. Evelyn Beresford (Elissa Landi) turns up, accompanied by a scapegrace Army officer whose wife is absent and in poverty. The officer (Paul Cavanagh) plays cards with a clownish prizefighter (Victor McLaglen) and wins. The prizefighter tries to steal from his mother (Beryl Mercer) to pay the money and his mother dies of fear. The prizefighter then kills the caddish officer for cheating in the card game. Elissa Landi is suspected of the crime and the only witness who might help her, an ex-soldier, is so paralyzed by the spectacle of murder that he can neither write nor speak. This catalog of misfortunes is further expanded by interruptions in a minor romance between a young Oxford man (Alexander Kirkland) and a London art student (Barbara Weeks). Good shot: Beryl Mercer gasping as a hand, which she does not know is her son's, reaches through a window for her money.

Are You Listening? (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Although only the title of this picture is borrowed from Tony Wons's radio activities, Are You Listening? contains sufficient broadcasting hokum to mislead the uninitiated into believing that life in a studio is a combination of hangovers, sensational denouements and bleached blondes who arrive late for the dog biscuit hour. William Haines, a continuity writer of radio hogwash, has a private office, a secretary, an insufficient salary and a venomous wife who nags him whenever he comes home, which is seldom. For love he has turned to an artist in the studio (Madge Evans), but is unable to marry her because his wife refuses to divorce him until he can earn enough to ''give her a decent alimony." He is fired for losing his sense of humor, moves to a cheap hotel, accidentally kills his wife. With his friend from the studio he attempts a getaway by motor while the nation's regular radio programs are interrupted at frequent intervals with demands for his capture. As he is marched off to serve his sentence for manslaughter, you are assured that matters will be satisfactory to all parties when he is free. You are also certain, throughout the picture, that William Haines is not yet capable of emotional screen work.

Ladies of the Jury (RKO) takes a situation which cinema generally treats as melodrama, and makes it into a comedy which is not quite a farce. The scene is a courtroom but the principal character is not the actress (Jill Esmond) who, charged with murder, occupies the defendant's chair. Heroine is a gaunt and fluttering matron, Mrs. Livingston Baldwin Crane (Edna Mae Oliver) who arrives, with her maid and chauffeur, to serve on the jury. She salutes the judge, whom she has met socially. Her conduct during the trial borders on disdain, if not contempt, of court. In the jury room Mrs. Crane shows that she has a better notion of the case than her associates. When all the rest vote "Guilty" she holds out for an acquittal.

She is so shrewd, stubborn and adroitly tactful that the other members of the jury presently come round to her way of thinking. A real estate salesman, a garage mechanic, the proprietor of a Greek restaurant and two gibbering intellectuals are easy for her to deal with. An Irish cook is less tractable until Mrs. Crane promises her a job. When she has convinced all of her peers except two, Mrs. Crane arranges a trip to the scene of the crime which proves that she is right as well as rigid. Like Marie Dressier and Polly Moran, Edna Mae Oliver is an oldtime actress who, with the disappearance of exterior attractions, has had ample time to perfect her comedy technique. Among other members of the jury are Kitty Kelly, who uses the expression "Go milk a duck," and Ken Murray as a real estate salesman.

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