New Pictures

Tillers of the Soil. A French film records the adventures of two youths in love with one girl. The grandfather, symbol of the stern paternalism that runs with and parallel to the landowner's devotion to his soil, forces the girl to marry the less favored. The frustrated beloved goes to Paris, becomes a potent sculptor. He returns to fight the jealous brother, to die in the struggle. The acting is sincere though violent.

The Monkey Talks. When the play was presented, Jacques Lerner amazed audiences by simulating the monkey who talks. In the film he looks even more beastlike. Yet the love sequence for that very reason seems more unlikely. As a man, he loves the heroine. As a chimpanzee, a disguise assumed to help a friend, he appears in circus sideshows. Under these circumstances it is no easy matter to woo a sensitive girl not wise in anthropology. Yet it is done successfully with melodramatic incident.

See You in Jail (Jack Mulhall). Son (Jack Mulhall) clashes with Father over conduct of the milk business, is thereupon advised to start his own route outside the family circle. Speeding near Lost Angeles lodges him in jail where he meets most of the best people, confined for the same offense. Social opportunities thus afforded give rise to better milk and more of it, provided by Son in competition with a now alarmed as well as irate parent. Father swallows defeat. Son marries the heroine with the family blessing, the while a moderately amused audience guffaws at his clowning.

The Fourth Commandment (Belle Bennett). Honor Thy Father And Thy Mother, says the Good Book. The film records some of the complexities incidental to obedience in a hierarchy of several generations including odd lots of fathers, mothers, in-laws, relations, offspring. The tribulations evoke all the sweet fortitude of the white-haired mother so dear to U. S. sentiment. Belle Bennett is as maternal as advertised.

Casey at the Bat (Wallace Beery). As the original Sultan of Swat, Wallace Beery struts what was once the Great White Way, flirts with the girls of the Florodora Sextette, misbehaves toward his sweetheart Camille (Zazu Pitts) in a sporty buggy, thus forcing her to trudge a dusty homeward path; in short, does all the inept things possible for a lionized lump. The moot point is, why did he strike out with the bases full? The breath of scandal is finally deodorized by Luck and Love. The home-run king reigns on in left-handed magnificence.