The New Pictures

Mutiny on the Bounty (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) exhibits more strikingly than any previous cinema in which he has appeared the peculiar capacity of Actor Charles Laughton to seem created by providential dispensation in the identical likeness of whomever he undertakes to impersonate. Actor Laughton is currently in London preparing to appear in an English version of Cyrano de Bergerac. To perfect his understanding of the play, he learned it by heart in French and had up to last week written out twelve copies by memory. Before making Mutiny on the Bounty he went to London, said to Gieves, Bond Street tailors: "I wish to inquire about some uniforms you made some time ago for Captain William Bligh." Said the clerk: "Yes sir, and about what was the date, sir?'' Said Actor Laughton: "1789." Gieves promptly produced the exact specifications of the uniforms worn by Captain Bligh, had a complete set copied for Actor Laughton to wear in the picture.

Preliminaries like these do not, in Actor Laughton's case, illustrate that eccentric vanity which distinguishes so many of his confreres. They are superficial but valid symbols of his extraordinary devotion to the task at hand, a devotion amounting to an obsession and one which, in a curious way, has had an important secondary effect upon his work in this picture. The character of Captain Bligh, as presented to posterity by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, was remarkable for combining, with the peevish, effeminate cruelty which caused the Bounty's crew to set him adrift in an open boat in mid-Pacific, that cool, incredible heroism which enabled the boat, propelled as much by the force of Bligh's indomitable determination as by wind or oars, to reach the Dutch island of Timor, across 3,600 miles of open sea. In Mutiny on the Bounty, the magnificence of Laughton's work rests largely in the way he resolves these strangely complementary forces motivating its central character. Bligh aboard the Bounty, a pasty-faced, sharp-tongued, miserly sadist, is a splendid portrait. It is, however, only a preface to Bligh after the mutiny. Bligh on duty and in action, cursing his loyal sailors from the stern of the open boat, riding the tiller in mountainous seas, slitting the neck of a seabird for a sick sailor and finally, as the gulls rise out of the sea mist, croaking through dried lips the one word, "Timor."

Aside from Actor Laughton's performance, Mutiny on the Bounty is all that anyone would have any right to expect. The three-volume epic of Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island (TIME. Oct. 17, 1932; Jan. 15, 1934; Nov. 5, 1934), written from and for an amazing record, was not designed for neat conversion into a scenario. Despite the efforts of Producer Irving Thalberg, Director Frank Lloyd, three scenarists and $2,000,000 to give it balance, polish and direction, the picture lacks all three. There are intervals when the two hours which it lasts seem as interminable as Bligh's voyage in the open boat must have seemed to its occupants. The narrative, which skips the saga of Pitcairn's Island entirely for Tahiti love interest, still contains enough material for at least three films. These faults are indigenous to the historic material used. The picture has few others. It is superbly photographed by Arthur Edeson. Franchot Tone as Byam, Clark Gable as Christian and Dudley Digges as the ship's doctor perform brilliantly in the cast that supports Laughton. A superb story magnificently told. Mutiny on the Bounty will undoubtedly compensate its makers in box-office cash and artistic credit for the trouble which it caused them. Peter Ibbetson (Paramount), as admirers of George Du Maurier will recall. is the story of an unfortunate young Englishman whose life is materially blighted and spiritually enriched by memories of a childhood romance. Separated from his inamorata at the age of 8, Peter Ibbetson meets her again when he is a thriving young architect, she the Duchess of Towers. Nudged by the coincidence that both have the same dreams at night, they fall in love once more, again with tragic consequences when Peter Ibbetson goes to jail for murder. In this crisis their faculty of "dreaming true" is convenient. Divided by day, they spend their nights together, roaming the happy landscapes of illusion until both die, almost simultaneously.

To the cinema industry, in its sudden and amazingly catholic attention to the literary triumphs of the past ranging from Shakespeare to Way Down East, this tender story was doubtless recommended by the fact that the love which it delineates, while unlicensed, is endowed with supernatural purity. It is the merit of Peter Ibbetson that its evanescent romance does not evaporate entirely in the dissolve treatment which all such dream-epics demand from the camera. This is due partly to the firmly sympathetic touch of Director Henry Hathaway, previously noted for such outdoor works as Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and partly to the presence of Gary Cooper and Ann Harding whose eminently unmystical impersonations correct the narrative's tendency to become shrouded in poetic fantasy.

For the rest, even such changes as having Peter murder the Duke of Towers (John Halliday) instead of his martinet uncle probably will not entirely reconcile contemporary cinemaddicts to Du Maurier's pre-Freudian conception of the dream. Peter Ibbetson is a tasteful and solicitous exhibition of a box office champion that has lost its punch. Best sequence : the Duke of Towers sardonically informing his wife that she and Peter Ibbetson are in love. The Melody Lingers On (Reliance) is a misnomer. What lingers on is the life story of a pianist (Josephine Hutchinson) and her search for her mislaid bastard who, when found, wants to be an opera singer like his Italian daddy (George Houston).

A Night at the Opera (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Current Marx Brothers story: Irving Thalberg, giving them their present contract, pointed out that he was offering as much for three brothers as they had received before the fourth Marx turned agent. Yelled Groucho Marx: "What do you mean? The same dough? Without Zeppo, we're worth twice as much." Since Gagman Groucho supplies much of the Marx humor before the camera, this is a fair sample of the dialog in A Night at the Opera. Confined but little by a script by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, or by the interpolation of legitimate operatic numbers, Groucho follows his own formula of throwing out gags, good and bad. as fast as he can talk, letting the good ones float the bad ones, trusting that the average will favor him.

As Otis B. Driftwood, social manager of Mrs. Claypool, he has advised his client to further her social aspirations by sponsoring an opera company. Mrs. Claypool gives $200,000 to the director of the company (Siegfried Rumann), who signs up famed Lassparri and his sweetheart, Rosa (Kitty Carlisle). Meanwhile, by mistake, Groucho has signed an unknown tenor, Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones), who also loves Rosa. Ricardo, his friend Chico, and Harpo, discharged valet of Lassparri, stow away in Groucho's trunk when the opera company sets out for New York from Milan. What follows in the course of one of the most complicated feature comedies ever photographed concerns the efforts of Groucho and associates to get Ricardo a job in the opera company and further his amour with Rosa. To U. S. audiences which once split their sides at the Marxes, but now find them dullish, it will be good news that the brothers have some new routines. 1) Shipboard routine: Hysteria is built up by putting four people and a trunk in a cabin intended for one person .and suitcase, then bringing in stewards, manicurists, telephone repairmen, et al. 2) Landing routine: The stowaways, minus passports, cut the beards from three sleeping notables, glue them on, enjoy a public welcome until voiceless Harpo, called on for a speech, stalls by drinking water from the speakers' table, washes off his beard. 3) Opera routine: At the premiere of the opera company a full symphony orchestra attempts to render Il Trovatore while the brothers run mad, trying to break up the performance so as to get the lead for Ricardo, climbing in the flies of the opera house and swinging from rope to rope so that wild pieces of scenery appear behind the singers. As a climax Groucho substitutes plebeian music on the racks, causing the orchestra at a turn of the score-page to swing from Trovatore into Take Me Out to the Ball Game while Groucho enters down the aisle, selling popcorn and peanuts.

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