The New Pictures

Romola. There was a general readjusting of critical values after the advent of Romola. It began to be admitted publicly, and by great men, that Lillian Gish is the best of all the picture actresses. True, she does not twang the public heart strings as loudly and as often as Gloria Swanson. Yet she has undoubtedly the most distinguished record of the sisterhood--Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, The White Sister. There are those who say that, with David W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin, she completes the trio of the only true artists of the screen.

The Florence that George Eliot found in Italy and fashioned for her novel Romola has been recaptured by the camera. Amazingly beautiful photography of the strange old sleepy city on the Arno is, next to Miss Gish's playing, the feature of the narrative. Opening with a galley-slave ship scene, the escape of the villain, his marriage with the blind Bardi's daughter, his betrayal of her, his denial of his aged father, his death, follow the outline of the story.

Greed. Eric Von Stroheim is the boy that used to do the dirty work, the villain. He acts no more. As a director, he still believes in dirty work. Greed is taken for Frank Norris's gold-digging story, McTeague, and reeks with realism; Von Stroheim relies on reeking pictures. He makes an actor pick his nose. Von Stroheim relies on reeking pictures. The No. 1 actor is a brute (Gibson Gowland) married to a grasping wife. The final episode of death in the desert carries a brutal film to a brilliantly brutal climax.

North of 36. Like The Covered Wagon, it is a Western story; like The Covered Wagon, it employs Lois Wilson and Ernest Torrence for two of the leading players. Unlike The Covered Wagon, it employs cattle instead of prairie schooners; and again, unlike that extraordinary film, it fails notably to mix history and drama in the right proportions. The play is a saga of the cattlemen, a panorama of miles of prairie where trailed the endless herds of long horns. A villain--you know he is the villain because he shot an Indian girl while she was bathing in the creek--is in the competent hands of Noah Beery.

Circe the Enchantress. Mae Murray has only one point in life after all, and that is to wear gowns. Certainly she is not an actress. Certainly the story, even if Ibanez did write it specially for her, is the worn-out stencil of the wild woman fascinating the solemn, godly hero. Anyway, Mae Murray wears gowns.

Christine of the Hungry Heart. A simple story pointing a moral usually gets utterly lost in Hollywood. Too many tears and a bathing party normally indicate simplicity and the moral. Christine, dealing in sincerity, is an exception. It argues the old theme of a man's work and a man's wife, and how much time he should give to each. It takes Christine (Florence Vidor) three husbands to reach her decision.