The New Pictures

Man of Two Worlds (RKO). The spectacle of a Czech matinee idol dressed in a bear skin and shouting "Bowwow" while he crouches on his knees in Greenland represents, in this picture, good showmanship. Faced with the task of making Francis Lederer a figure as exciting to female cinemaddicts as he was to Manhattan theatregoers last year, RKO had major obstacles to overcome. Lederer's strong accent ruled him out as a U. S. character. Because his charm is his appearance of naivete it would have been inappropriate to enroll him in a European drawing room drama. The idea of casting Lederer as a romantic Eskimo not only suited his accent and appearance but it left a part open for pretty little Steffi Duna, for whom Lederer hoped there would be room in his first U. S. cinema. She appears as his Eskimo wife.

By the time he begins barking, Aigo (Lederer) has left his wife behind in her igloo and gone along to help an expedition of British scientists round up Greenland fauna for a London museum. His yips cause a large polar bear to mistake him for a puppy and chase him down a hole in the ice. The hole is a trap which Aigo has constructed and from which he emerges with a few bites in the leg. When the scientists start back to London with the bear safely caged they are accompanied by Aigo who has fallen in love with a photograph of the daughter (Elissa Landi) of the head explorer (Henry Stephenson).

In the white man's country Aigo finds kindness and misunderstanding. Dressed in a tab collar and smoothed clown by a valet, he looks like a Londoner but he talks like a fool. The explorer's daughter is as handsome as her picture but less lovable. When Aigo offers to light her cigaret by saying "Me make!" she teaches him to smoke. When the smoke makes him cough, she plies him with whiskey. When the whiskey makes him amorous, she gives him a disdainful push. Finally it becomes necessary to ship Aigo home. He feels bitter at first but a good long look at Steffi Duna cheers him up. The picture ends with a neat inversion of the usual Northland nonsense: Aigo is left happily fishing for a seal. Frantisek Lederer is 27, a native of Prague. He started as an errand boy, became an extra in the theatre, accepted the offer of an actor named Roman Rheinhardt to teach him acting in "twelve easy lessons" for $2.50. After playing on the Berlin stage for Max Reinhardt, acting in German cinema, he made his English debut in the London production of My Sister and I. Cheered on the opening night, he explained his inability to make a proper curtain speech by telling the audience in German that the lines of the play were all the English he could speak. Last year, in Autumn Crocus, Lederer performed in Manhattan as a Tyrolean innkeeper. For a scene in which he climbed a papier-mache Alp, he insisted on wearing realistic hobnailed boots which caused him to fall down. Lederer neither drinks nor smokes. He likes to wear tails and a high hat at night, a black turtlenecked sweater in the day. Steffi Duna played with Lederer in Die Wunderbar in Berlin. Last winter she had the lead in the unsuccessful Manhattan production of the Three Penny Opera.

Eight Girls in a Boat (Paramount). This picture is not, as advertisements might suggest, a musical comedy about bathing beauties. It is a U. S. imitation of Maedchen in Uniform, showing what happens to Christa (Dorothy Wilson), a schoolgirl who has a romance with a chemistry student (Douglass Montgomery) in a nearby college. She becomes pregnant. As soon as she reveals this fact to her classmates and teachers, Christa loses her position as stroke of the school crew but becomes such a celebrity among her classmates that she scarcely minds her demotion. Her father (Walter Connolly) is angry but her headmistress and swimming teacher (Kay Johnson) feels sympathetic. Even her seducer presently makes up his mind to marry her.

Films about girls' boarding schools are usually a puzzle to the Hays organization. Maedchen in Uniform introduced a new and controversial subject. The lesson which Eight Girls in a Boat might teach susceptible minors is that misbehavior is good fun with advantageous consequences. As something which Director Richard Wallace obviously tried to make a work of art, the picture is even more dubious than its moral because it is imitative, sentimental, insincere.

Easy to Love (Warner Bros.). The married estate of Carol (Genevieve Tobin) and John (Adolphe Menjou) is accurately outlined when she remarks: "First a double bed. then twin beds, now separate rooms." When Carol discovers her husband is consorting with her best friend Charlotte (Mary Astor), she acquires a nominal friend of her own (Ed ward Everett Horton). Carol's aimless attempts to get her husband back permit all four characters to engage in some wan didoes but in the end it takes Carol's daughter (Patricia Ellis) to bring her parents together. Shots for admirers of blank, blithering Edward Everett Horton: his telling Carol about the sardine business; his daze when Carol indicates she likes him.

Moulin Rouge (20th Century) is a sketchy compendium of familiar musicom edy patterns. Like Dancing Lady it is a backstage romance. Its show-within-a-show suggests Forty-Second Street. For plot, Moulin Rouge performs the remarkable feat of superimposing two of the dustiest of formulas. Constance Bennett, as a singer who gets a chance to star, surprises one & all by being good. Likewise she completely deceives everyone by assuming the flimsiest sort of disguise. She wishes to impress her songwriting husband (Franchot Tone) and a producer (Tullio Carminati) but does not succeed until she changes places with a Parisian music-hall star who used to be her partner in a sister-act. Changing the color of her hair and assuming a French accent, Constance Bennett nearly seduces her husband away from herself. Good shot: Franchot Tone promising Tullio Carminati to plead his case with Constance Bennett, then uneasily making love on his own behalf while Carminati plays rapturously on the piano. Good tunes: ''Coffee in the Morning, Kisses in the Night,'' "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."

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