The New Pictures
Masquerade in Vienna (George Kraska) is based upon an episode in the life of Franz von Reznicek, who was the Peter Arno of Austria 40 years ago. Made in Europe in 1934, the film was bought by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and reproduced completely year and a half ago as Escapade, with Luise Rainer in the lead. So good was MGM's job that Actress Rainer was catapulted to Hollywood stardom. Meanwhile the original cinema was winning acclaim in Europe. Last week, with Escapade well out of the way, MGM allowed the original Masquerade in Vienna to appear in the U. S. for the first time. Many critics declared it better than its celebrated copy. The lead is played by the experienced European actress, Paula Wessely, who fully equals Actress Rainer's performance but is unlikely to equal her rise, for she refused a Hollywood contract.
In every detail of plot, staging and dialog the two pictures are almost identical. Artist Heideneck (Anton Walbrook), needing a subject for a magazine cover, picks up the wife of a Viennese doctor at a masquerade, paints her in nothing but mask and muff. The muff is recognized by everyone as the one won at the masquerade by the doctor's brother's fiancee. To shield the two women, Heideneck invents a third, one Leopoldine Dur. There happens to be a real Leopoldine Dur (Paula Wessely), companion to an antique countess. The resulting farce is played with such subtle humor and skill that spectators are scarcely disturbed by the fact that all dialog is in German, necessitating brief English footnotes,
Crux of the story is the picture of the nude girl in mask and muff. But cinemaudiences never see the model or the drawing. They see only clothes on the floor and people laughing the next day. For spectators with no imagination, the producers carefully took a "still" of Model Hilde von Stolz, distributed it for insertion in cinemansion advertising and programs.
Man of the People (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Lawyer Jack Moreno (Joseph Calleia) finds, soon after hanging out his shingle, that a successful criminal practice is impossible for him without the aid of the town's boss, Grady (Thomas Mitchell). After a succession of legal shellackings he talks business with Grady. But Moreno soon gets too big for Grady's taste and when the time comes to pick a new District Attorney, Moreno is cashiered. His fighting failure brings him to the attention of the Governor, who appoints him special investigator of some cases involving illegal stock promotion. Moreno pursues his investigation even though his girl Abbey (Florence Rice) asks him not to. At a public hearing on the financing of a suspicious gold-mine invention, Moreno's trick with a tomato and a magnet ruins Abbey's family fortune, but she loves him anyway.
Less ambitiously contrived than such past celluloid legal biographies as The Mouthpiece (Warners) and For The Defense (Paramount), Man of the People is rather a character sketch than a story. In spite of its quiet manner and narrative form, it carries the conviction that always clings to an interesting subject handled with a minimum of frills. This conviction depends on accumulated detail and testifies to Screen Playwright Frank Dolan's diligent observation in the days when he was covering trials for Manhattan newspapers.
Typical sequence: a prosecutor confounding one of Moreno's clients who claimed he was cutting fish in a fish market when a crime was committed. The prosecutor brings a basket of fish into court, proving that he cannot identify a sea-trout, a bass or a halibut. Moreno tops the prosecutor's trick by claiming that the client works in a kosher market, is familiar only with such fish as pike and carp, which he chops for gefuelte fish.
Stolen Holiday (First National) disclaims any parallelism to fact, but is obviously Hollywood's version of the notorious Affaire Stavisky, greatest French scandal since Dreyfus (TIME, Jan. 15, 1934, et seq.). Tall, stately, brunette Arlette Simon, before she married the Russian swindler Sacha Stavisky, was Chanel's most beautiful model. The obvious choice for the lead in Stolen Holiday was tall, stately, brunette Kay Francis, Hollywood's No. 1 clothes horse.
As Nicole Picot, she is a model who is persuaded by a penniless Russian criminal named Stefan Orloff (Claude Rains) to help him pull off what she thinks is an honest deal. He sets her up in her own dress shop, goes on to become France's greatest swindler while she, still unaware of his dishonesty, becomes Paris' leading clothes designer. She refuses to marry him, preferring a career. Just as Orloff's deals come tumbling about his ears, she falls in love with English Diplomat Anthony Wayne (Ian Hunter). Orloff persuades her she is obligated to marry him in a desperate effort to shield him from the police. The effort fails, and Orloff ends where Stavisky did. Hollywood has the police kill him, call it suicide. Through Diplomat Wayne, Mme Orloff manages to avoid the fate of Mme Stavisky, who became a showgirl at Manhattan's bawdy French Casino.
A continual alternation between melodrama and fashion show, Stolen Holiday is capably acted, but labors under a script full of force-draft effervescence. Claude Rains, fresh from a series of such blood-curdlers as The Invisible Man, carries off the honors with his unexpected restraint in this more obvious Deep Dark Villain role. Ian Hunter, fresh from the sentimentality of To Mary-With Love, is still unctuous. Kay Francis, fresh from a trip to Europe, hides her acting ability under a series of fantastic clothes, which as usual bring sighs from women, snorts from men. Most fantastic: a white evening gown, half Escape from the Seraglio, half Visit to the Turkish Bath.
The Robber Symphony (Concordia).
In that excellent oldtime silent picture The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the lead was played by a skinny, macabre Viennese named Friedrich Feher. Mr. Feher is now a grey-haired, heavy-set man who looks like the composer he has become. Two years ago, Composer Feher got the notion of a cinema in which music would bear the burden of narration. With his voluptuous wife, Magda Sonja, and his chubby son, Hans, in the main roles, he wrote, composed, directed and cut The Robber Symphony. It won immediate success in Europe, was chosen one of the ten best pictures of the year in 1936 by the International Artistic Motion Picture Exhibition in Venice. Last week, chaperoned by the Feher family, it made its debut in the U. S. in Manhattan, where it was billed with great fanfare as the "first surrealistic symphonic cinema fantasy." This turned out to be pure pressagentry, for The Rob ber Symphony lacks even the prime sur realistic quality of being unintelligible.
Disillusioned thus, the first-night audience, which paid $10 per seat, soon was disillusioned about the picture's other an nounced qualifications. Despite the rec ommendations of Europe and Venice, The Robber Symphony is an incredibly inept execution of a brilliant idea.
It is supposed to portray a child s imaginings of his own adventures with a band of opera bouffe robbers. The boy grinds a hurdy-gurdy drawn by a mule while his mother and grandfather sing. When the robbers hide a stocking full of gold in the hurdy-gurdy, the fun starts. Unable to get at the booty, the robbers get the elders drunk, drag the hurdy-gurdy away with the boy asleep on top. Boy and hurdy-gurdy, mule and dog then endure a series of escapades. They drift about a lake in a rowboat. They are jailed. They climb the Alps and get lost in the snow. They meet a jolly hermit. They foil the robbers who follow them disguised as minstrels in an empty beer keg on wheels. Finally, the robbers resort to collecting all the hurdy-gurdies in the region to distract the boy from his long enough for them to get the gold. This fails too when the string of hurdy-gurdies cascade down a mountain trail in a careening dance. The robbers are nabbed, the boy gets the gold.
Friedrich Feher is a better composer than he is cineman. His score is a pleasant, tinkly copy of Franz Schubert, accompanies the pictures so well that only 400 words are necessary. Technically, however, The Robber Symphony is early Keystone. The sound grinds, roars, squeaks. The photography is mostly bad, the acting lugubriously burlesqued, the fantasy laid on with a shovel. Two of the least unsuccessful fantasies: The dog's tail wagging to rhumba music; the dog wetting a man's trouser-leg because he will not give a penny for the music.
Criminal Lawyer (RKO) adds nothing to the standard pattern of courtroom melodramas. Engaged to a girl he does not love and working for a notable criminal, shyster Lawyer Brandon (Lee Tracy) ditches both when he encounters a pretty streetwalker (Margot Grahame) in night court and when he is offered the district attorney's job. This lands him in both marital and legal hot water which reaches the boiling point in the inevitable courtroom finale. Portraying four other court battles as well, Criminal Lawyer obtains its only tinge of interest from the clever cross-questioning tactics of Lawyer Brandon.
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