The New Pictures

A Woman of Paris. Last week it was stated in these columns that the progress of the cinema had been miraculous rather than ridiculous. In support of this contention. Little Old New York and The Covered Wagon were cited as examples of the conspicuously worth while. Conscientious readers will herewith unfile the copy in question and draw a heavy black line through these titles. In the margin they will substitute A Woman of Paris.

For some years great groups of the illuminati have been proclaiming Charles S. Chaplin an artist. Yet our good old uncles and funny old aunts, who really knew about custard pies, demurred. They said that when one comedian dropped a lighted cigar down another comedian's trousers it was not art. And for their part they couldn't see anything funny in one man hitting another in the seat of what they termed "pants." In their day the seat of the, pardon us, trousers was a disciplinary objective; they refused, to admit the right of Charles Chaplin to make it simply the butt of a jest.

Charles has justified himself. He has produced a picture (A Woman of 'Paris') which will nail, up new signs at the crossroads, of cinema progress. He has not acted in the picture; instead of his agitated derby he has employed that essential portion of his being just below it.

Edna Purviance is the star. She will be remembered as the compelling vision who accompanied Chaplin in his early comedy wanderings. Rather more maturely moulded than in those days, her first serious effort is steadily satisfactory.

The story of the picture is not important. It tells of a Parisian mistress and how her tinsel world came tumbling all about her when the youth she used to love entered the gates.

Profoundly interesting, however, is the revolutionary restraint employed by Chaplin. The heaving of the breast, the rolling of the eyes, the pitching of the agony-stricken actors, in fact virtually all the fervid motions of emotion that have so long made cinema supporters sickish, are omitted.

The Spanish Dancer. With the production of this picture, the Polish invasion of Hollywood shows up considerably. There was a time when prophets foresaw Pola Negri as the preponderant personage on the screens of the world. Mary Pickford, annoyed thereby, put up her curls and played Rosita. The same story (Don Cesar de Bazan) is the backbone of Miss Negri's The Spanish Dancer. Mary's acting and Mary's production were superior. (National sigh of relief.)

Ever since Pola had the temerity to throw herself at the American people in an imported play entitled Passion, it has been impossible to find theatres large enough to show her pictures. Accordingly reflection? that neither she nor her pictures are what they used to be are rather a waste of ink and paper.

Strangers of the Night. Those who trot consistently at the heels of the drama will recall this play as Captain Applejack. It is something of a double exposure--a drawing room comedy with the death's-head flag of a pirate brig fluttering steadily in the background. In the course of an evening when the country house of Ambrose Applejohn is to be robbed of a certain hidden treasure, he falls asleep and dreams himself his bloody ancestor, the pirate, Captain Applejack. Awakened, he finds the memories have metamorphosed his mind. From a sleepy country gentleman he turns savage master. The robbers suffer.

The Bad Man. A literal translation of the play by the same name, this picture offers considerable spellbinding. Holbrook Blinn is Bandit Pancho Lopez; Enid Bennett is the tiny, timid wife. The locale is the open spaces.