The New Pictures

La Maternelle (Photosonor). Made in Paris two years ago and now exhibited in the U. S. for the first time, this amazing little study of school teachers and school children in the slums of Paris has been generally recognized abroad as one of the authentic masterpieces of the contemporary cinema. Superficially, it is the story of Rose, the school housemaid (Madeleine Renaud) whose intuitive sympathy for the inmates brings her to the favorable attention of the government doctor, and of Marie (Paulette Elambert), woe-begone little daughter of a Montmartre prostitute, who chooses Rose as her protector when her mother runs away. Essentially, it is not a story at all but a series of small panels depicting the daily life of the moppets and their guardians.

Among these are a "psychological experiment" in which the children are allowed to make friends with a white rabbit, then informed that he will be cooked for their lunch; a pageant, in which the morose urchin selected to act as king has to have fleas combed out of his hair lest he upset his crown by scratching; Marie's effort to commit suicide when, after seeing Rose leave with the doctor, she thinks herself abandoned again.

The qualities of simplicity and tenderness, in which the best French pictures have so often outclassed Hollywood, give these little scenes a dramatic impact which, by comparison, makes the collapse of Pompeii (see p. 52) a pin drop. Good shot: in the ring of faces around the white rabbit, a minute, snub-nosed Negro, speechless with approval.

Madeleine Renaud, member of the Comedie Franc,, whose performance in Maria Chapdelaine (TIME, Oct. 7) brought her to the attention of U. S. cinemaddicts, was responsible for the sensible suggestion that the adults in La Maternelle should wear no makeup. Otherwise, credit for dialog, direction and, to a large extent, photography goes to Jean Benoit-Levy, who adapted the picture from Leon Frapie's novel. Son of a toy manufacturer, bespectacled, 47, Director Benoit-Levy, whose Itto, dealing with Moroccan revolution, is the current cinema sensation in France, selected his cast from slum children who had never acted or even learned to recite. Paulette Elambert, a rather ugly little girl with a big mouth and sad intense eyes, hopes to grow up to be a confectioner.

In his capacity as Secretary of Educational Cinema, Director Benoit-Levy was last week lecturing at Columbia University on the "Social Role of a Motion Picture Director."

The Last Days of Pompeii (RKO). The connection between this picture and Baron Bulwer-Lytton's famed novel begins and ends with the title. It is a massive melodrama relating in epic terms the life history of an Augustan prizefighter, ancient in its settings but modern in its methods, and equipped with everything from the Crucifixion to a holdup.

Marcus (Preston Foster) becomes a gladiator when the death of his wife and small son for lack of medical attention impresses on him the fact that money has advantages. In short order, he becomes the Joe Louis of Pompeii, adopts the son of an opponent he has killed in the arena, retires from the ring, goes into horse dealing. On a voyage to Judea, he meets both Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. The former brings his small ward out of a coma. The latter puts Marcus in a fair way to make his fortune by a robbery.

Back in Pompeii again, Marcus finds himself on top of the social pile. He has a fine house, a private galley-landing and free seats at the arena, which he supplies with slaves. The only kink in his arrangements is supplied by his young Flavius (John Wood) who, remembering the experience of his childhood, has grown up to be a Christian. Flavius does his best to free slaves condemned to the arena, a capital offense at which the prefect of Pompeii catches him.

The destruction of Pompeii (79 A.D.) rescues Flavius and Marcus from their dilemma. Flavius has just been tossed into the arena when the walls begin to fall. He and a pretty captive girl escape from the slave pit. Poor old Marcus, convinced finally that crime does not pay, sacrifices his life to help them get away in a galley.

As entertainment, The Last Days of Pompeii is exciting, spectacular and ennobling in a matter-of-fact fashion. As an actor's Roman holiday, it is particularly satisfactory for razor-nosed Basil Rathbone. Though deprived of the peg-topped trousers which have so often added to the elegance of his impersonations, he makes his Pontius a brilliant prototype of a world-weary and sardonic early empire politician. The most exciting moment in The Last Days of Pompeii is not the eruption of Vesuvius but a quiet scene on Marcus' front porch when Flavius asks Pontius, back from his procuratorship, whether there was a faith-healer in the province who used to preach the Brotherhood of Man and, if so, what became of him. Says Pontius Pilate: "There was. I crucified him."

It's in the Air (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is a lowdown, occasionally hilarious comedy about a pair of grafters poaching on the sports world for a living. Jack Benny is a gambler. Ted Healy is his stooge. After a catalog of petty rackets, the story straightens out into the semblance of a plot. Benny is trying to get away from a Federal officer (Nat Pendleton), out to jail him on income tax charges. To elude the detective and arrive at a resort where his estranged wife (Una Merkel) works as tennis instructor, Benny procures an airplane by explaining to a manufacturer that he wants to "find a site for a stratosphere flight."

This situation reaches its climax in the picture's funniest sequence, in the gondola of a balloon. After shedding the Treasury agent in a parachute, Benny tries to maintain a broadcast while coping with a blizzard, a thunderstorm, his stooge's spells of unconsciousness, and his wife's anxiety coming in by radio. Good shot: Healy confronted with evidence that he has paid his hotel bill in a check written in ink which becomes invisible when dry.

. . .

Jack Benny is currently the world's highest-paid entertainer. He receives approximately $7,500 a week for his Jello broadcasts, $100,000 from M-G-M for each of his pictures. Last year NBC gave him a gold medal as No. 1 star of the air. This year his real popularity (as well as the ludicrous exaggerations of radio publicists) is exemplified by the claim that his following is 18,000,000.

Born in Waukegan, Ill., Jack Benny spent his afternoons working in his father's haberdashery, his evenings learning to play the violin. He followed the well-scuffed path from amateur night to orchestra to vaudeville, with a patter & fiddle act. Dramatic Mirror of Nov. 12, 1921, said of him: "We would like more violin and less chatter." Benny ignored the warning, increased the chatter until he was playing comic roles in Shubert and Carroll shows on Broadway. One night Columnist Louis Sobol let him tell a few gags on his radio hour. Benny was a hit. His voice, grating on the stage, "took" on the air. Sponsored by General Foods, he worked up to his present eminence by an offhand amiability and the knack of weaving advertising matter into his act as part of the dialog.

On the air, Benny's wife, Mary Livingstone, feeds him his gags. He gives much of the credit for his success to Harry Conn who writes his routines--impromptu vaudeville with the affectation of a plot. In cinema, Benny played a half dozen pictures before Broadway Melody of 1936 made him a star.

Metropolitan (Twentieth Century-Fox). It is apparent that, until opera-cinemas can be written about persons other than opera singers, the form will remain affected, feeble, monotonous. However, until that time arrives, Metropolitan may be considered as one of the best examples of its sort yet screened. Its story varies from pattern in that the hero triumphs on the stage, not of the Metropolitan in Manhattan but of a rival company in Philadelphia. Furthermore, Metropolitan has a string of less negative qualities to recommend it. Its screen play, by Bess Meredyth and George Marion Jr., is unfailingly light-hearted and literate. Its score, though a potpourri of operatic and concert-stage favorites, is well chosen. Its cast includes Alice Brady, Virginia Bruce and Luis Alberni. Its star is Lawrence Tibbett, whose baritone voice is still the best vocal instrument the talking screen has presented to the U. S. public and who in this picture, his first in four years, is heard to better advantage than ever before.

First practical consequence of the Twentieth Century-Fox merger of last summer, Metropolitan includes an aria from The Barber of Seville, The Road to Mandalay and Glory Road in plain clothes, excerpts from Faust and Carmen, all sung by its affable, grape-nosed star with grace, good humor and superb enthusiasm. No better indication of the civilized qualities of the picture could be given than its adroit conclusion. Tibbett, harassed by the strain of running an opera company whose "angel" has deserted it, comes out to sing the prolog to Pagliacci. He does so in grand style to ringing applause from both the audience in the picture and, usually, the audience at it. Then,, instead of going on into what looked like an inevitable anticlimax of more arias, prolonged congratulations and embraces by hero and heroine, the curtain comes down and Metropolitan is over.

Good shot: Virginia Bruce, rendering Micaela's third act aria from Carmen, photographed so perfectly that few cinemaddicts will be aware that a double does her singing for her.

Hands Across the Table (Paramount) puts a new twist to the old one about the millionaire's son and the manicurist. Carole Lombard is the manicurist, Fred MacMurray the son. The twist is that the one idea they have in common keeps them apart. Both want to marry money.

Having lost all his father gave him, MacMurray gets engaged to an heiress and is dispatched to Bermuda by her family while she gets ready for the wedding. He spends his steamship fare taking Miss Lombard out after their meeting in a barber shop. Next day they make a deal whereby she lets him live in her apartment until the supposed vacation is over. In its appeal to a U. S. box-office which rarely resists the situation of two young people living together and not making love, Hands Across the Table should do well.

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