The New Pictures

Abe Lincoln In Illinois (RKO) falters through the Great Emancipator's frontier youth, does not hit its solemn stride until long-legged, melancholy Lawyer Lincoln stalks in to meet tightlipped, go-getting Mary Todd. From then on, it is dedicated to the proposition that its doom-ridden hero was nagged into greatness by an ambitious wife.

Main problem of this picture, which Robert Sherwood scripted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is the same as the play's: how to create a tragic mood when almost nothing tragic happens. As in the play, Scripter Sherwood tries to turn the trick with a series of biographical episodes, Lincoln's easygoing frontier life, the death of Ann Rutledge, his unhappy marriage, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, his election. As in the play, Actor Raymond Massey turns the trick for him. But there are also shrewd playwrighting touches: reluctant Mr. Lincoln symbolically taken in charge by the soldiers as soon as he wins his election ; Lincoln listening to his fellow townsmen sing John Brown's Body as the Presidential train heads him toward Washington, war, assassination.

Why Lincoln married Mary Todd is as hard to discover from the picture as from history, and veteran Actress Ruth Gordon (in her first picture) does not do much to clarify it. But Canadian-born Raymond Massey's ill-kempt, loose-lipped, moody Lincoln is as good on the screen as on the stage, and the picture's best excuse for being.

An old lady in Eugene, Ore., where much of the film was shot, does not agree. Because black-bearded Abraham Lincoln once dandled her as a child on his knee, she was introduced to clean-shaven Actor Massey, but she angrily refused to sit on Massey's knee for RKO's publicity department. Reason: a clean-shaven Lincoln is a monstrosity. "Why don't you let him play the part?" she shrilled, pointing to a black-bearded extra. "He could do it better than the man you have."

The Blue Bird (20th Century-Fox). Votaries of mystic Belgian Playwright Maurice Maeterlinck may be puzzled to find a wild-west forest fire blazing in the middle of this much publicized screen version of his fantasy, The Blue Bird. They have other surprises in store for them:

>Mytyl, the little sister in Maeterlinck's play, has become the picture's leading character to provide a part for Shirley Temple.

>Mytyl's father, a poor woodcutter in the play, has become a Tyrolese patriot about to join Andreas Hofer against Napoleon Bonaparte.

>The characters of Milk, Fire, Bread, Sugar have disappeared.

>Scraps of the Land of Memory and the Kingdom of the Future survive, somewhat transformed by Darryl F. Zanuck's magic wand.

Hollywood-hardened children, who like their fantasy lavish and solid, may enjoy the elaborate Technicolored sets (cost: $200,000). They may even take in their stride the skulls, owls, ravens, blazing lightning, flaming forest and crashing trees the producers have got together to scare the daylights out of them. They can scarcely fail to enjoy Shirley Temple's artful childishness or chubby, kinky-haired Johnny Russell as her little brother, Tyltyl.

To Shirley Temple it is rather important that they should. This year Cinemactress Temple, now age ten, fell to fifth place among Hollywood stars in box-office rating. Persistent rumor, persistently denied by her studio, has it that the success of The Blue Bird and the future of little Miss Temple are vitally connected.

The Shop Around the Corner (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) picturizes one of those completely unimportant, highly entertaining, expertly carpentered Hungarian plays which Ferenc Molnar used to turn out by the dozen, which Hollywood does better than it does almost anything else and which Ernst Lubitsch does better than anybody else in Hollywood. Producer-Director Lubitsch, riding high again as a result of his success with Ninotchka, calls this one "a miniature Grand Hotel." But this time the improbable goings-on concern the paternal boss and clerks in the Budapest leather-goods shop of Matuschek (rhymes with hat-to-check) & Co. As the plot has as many complications as characters, much of the fun comes in watching Scripter Samson Raphaelson neatly tangle and untangle them without tying himself in a hard knot.

From long experience, audiences know at first blush that the high-minded young man with whom Clerk Klara Novak (Mar garet Sullavan) is corresponding through a lonely-hearts hookup is her detested fellow clerk, Kralik (James Stewart). They also know that Hugo Matuschek is all wrong in suspecting Kralik of mis conduct with Mrs. Matuschek. The culprit, as everybody else can see, is oily Clerk Vadas. The outcome is equally certain.

As kindly, jealous Hugo Matuschek, Frank Morgan (who has a flair for Central European roles) turns in his best perform ance since he was Diana Wynyard's husband in Reunion in Vienna. William Tracy (the much hazed plebe of Brother Rat} is the typically brassy errand boy who, after saving his boss from suicide, badgers him into making his rescuer a clerk. James Stewart walks through the amiable busi ness of being James Stewart. Joseph Schildkraut, as usual in a minor part, as 'usual acts rings around everybody else.

Good shot: Felix Bressart, as a timid clerk afraid for his job, repeatedly dodging out of sight whenever Boss Matuschek asks for an opinion.

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