New Pictures

Chang. How did they do it? is the question everyone asks. The picture runs along on astonishingly familiar terms with the terrors of the Siamese jungle. It photographs elephants from under their feet, "shoots" tigers almost in their jaws, films a family of bears at play, leopards on the hunt, snakes in death struggles, monkeys a clowning, elephants nudging a village into oblivion. Dramatically, it is an account of the family of one Kru, of Siam, how he preserves his life and propagates his kind in the face of hostile nature. When wild beasts take to marauding, he takes to hunting. Both his cunning and their savagery are depicted with such clarity, plausibility and genuineness that those fortunate enough to be in the audience can only marvel at the intrepidity of the photographers, and ponder how insolently the net prevails over the claw. The big scene shows a great herd of chang (elephants) being driven into a trap by fear of natives camouflaged as bushes.

Secrets of the Soul. (Werner Kraus, Ruth Weyler). Another must be added to the triumphs of Ufa, German film creators. It is a dramatic picturization of the knife couple, of one of those who sit at the knee of Herr Freud. Why does nice Mr. Hero want to slit his wife's throat? Follow the dream and find out. Many a Freudian symbol will probably elude the spectator while a scrupulously scientific fantasy of the less definitely conscious mind is revealed on the screen. But the tense climax, the amazing photography cannot escape notice or fail of effect. When the psychoanalyst explains to the patient the cause of his wanting to knife his wife, the fixation is removed, her life saved. Rarely has science so artfully impregnated the fantastic.

Tracked by the Police (Rin Tin Tin). The hero is building an irrigation dam in Colorado. The villain wants to blow it up. But Rinty, the wonder dog, foxes the dastardly fellow, not only saves the dam by a display of amazing engineering but also ducks all the bullets flying in his direction. In the end Rinty and his bitch (Princess) show in a happy closeup.

The Heart Thief (Joseph Schildkraut, Lya de Putti). He is a young man of the Balkans for whose embraces the entire feminine population of those parts entertains a noticeable predilection. Therefore, he is called upon as the ideal instrument for frustrating a political marriage. So thoroughly does he execute his commission that the girl marries him. Joseph Schildkraut makes a jaunty flirt.

Special Delivery. Eddie Cantor's art is a matter of sustaining punches in the eye, somersaults down elevator shafts, kicks, with perfectly immobile countenance. All this he does and little more in the course of a series of gags illustrating what can happen to a sublimely stupid letter carrier whose flashes of shrewdness are funny when unexpected.

Rookies (Karl Dane, George K. Arthur). There is something inherently funny in sassing military discipline. When a little fellow (George Arthur) is the sasser, and a bulky one (Karl Dane) symbol of the sassed, there is the added Mutt & Jeff twist. All this is stuffed into the story of a rookie at a military training camp, making for a minimum of subtlety, a maximum of facial contortion, a modicum of hilarity.