The New Pictures

The Silver Cord (RKO). If there is one thing which U. S. cinemaddicts have been taught to consider wholesome, if not sacred, it is Mother Love. The producers of this picture therefore deserve credit for their courage. The Silver Cord is a searching and bitter character study of a woman whose exaggerated affection for her children has made weaklings of them and a monster of herself. Mrs. Phelps (Laura Hope Crews) badgers one of her sons (Eric Linden) into breaking his engagement on the ground that his fiancee (Frances Dee) does not love him enough. The girl tries to commit suicide by jumping into a lake and it strikes Mrs. Phelps as deplorable that her sons do not put on overcoats before going to pull her out. Then she does her best to spoil the marriage of her older son (Joel McCrea) --on the ground that his wife (Irene Dunne) is selfishly ambitious. This young lady finally outwits Mrs. Phelps with a dissertation on the maternal emotion which sounds particularly astringent coming so close to Mother's Day. As dramatic pathology, The Silver Cord is more pungent than profound. It derives its pungence largely from the performance of Laura Hope Crews, who played in the stage version by Sidney Howard in 1926. There is not much action in The Silver Cord but if the cinema does not improve upon the play in this respect it has the compensating advantage of being able to show close-ups of Miss Crews's face, as it becomes ingratiating, anxious, angry, greedy, terrified and, finally, a twitching mask of misdirected lust. Good shot: Mrs. Phelps spilling a cocktail when her daughter-in-law says that she expects a baby.

The Story of Temple Drake (Paramount). Books as conspicuously concupiscent as William Faulkner's Sanctuary always challenge and worry Hollywood. The U. S. public will tolerate between book covers material which could never be exhibited in a theatre. Admirers of Sanctuary may therefore be disappointed in this transcription of it, but The Story of Temple. Drake--although amply punctuated by shots in which the screen goes black to conceal everything except Director Stephen Roberts' prudence--is more effective than might have been expected. It is a dingy and violent melodrama, more explicit: about macabre aspects of sex than any previous products of Hollywood. Naturally enough Pop-Eye, the least lovable character in Sanctuary, docs not appear at all in The Story of Temple Drake. Temple is raped by the gangster who, in the book, was merely Pop-Eye's assistant. She takes a liking to him forthwith, accompanies him from the ramshackle 'leggers hideaway where an automobile accident has stranded her to more commodious quarters in a city sporting house. When her respectable suitor calls there to subpena the gangster, Trigger, in a trial for the murder of one of his underlings, Temple tries to leave, shoots Trigger for trying to stop her. When she tells all this on the witness stand, her respectable suitor, who has persuaded her to do so, proves himself to be the most broad-minded cinema hero of the year. He gathers Temple in his arms, tells her stupid father they should both be proud of her. In the part that George Raft refused because it would "offend his public," Jack La Rue -- a heavy-lidded young Italian who went to Hollywood to play in Scarface and lost the part to Raft -- is effectively sinister. Miriam Hopkins gives a brilliant performance as Temple Drake. Good shot : Temple fidgeting with her hat after she has pried it out of the dead Trigger's clenched fingers.

Picture Snatcher (Warner) is a vulgar but generally funny collection of black outs. They concern a young racketeer (James Cagney) who finds to his endless delight that he cannot be put in jail for stealing pictures for the tabloids. He also finds that his brother journalists are smart but no match for him. Smartest of them is a rowdy sob-sister (Alice White). When she flusters him, Cagney bluntly knocks her down. When a bereaved husband comes to shoot him he hides in the women's lavatory. When the daughter (Patricia Ellis) of a loud-mouthed Irish policeman (Robert Emmet O'Connor) visits the office, Cagney's tender instincts are released like a load of bricks. When he takes the girl home her father recognizes a once legitimate target and absentmindedly commences firing. Finally Cagney gets into trouble for smuggling a camera into an electrocution. He retires to a speakeasy, emerges to recover his prestige by turning over to police the No. 1 bandit of the city. This is the third successive Warner Brothers picture to be distinguished by lavatory scenes (the other two were Baby Face and Central Airport. A happy thought was the teaming of tough, noisy Alice White with tough, noisy Cagney. Without plot restrictions, it is doubtful who would have won the bout.

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