The New Pictures

Sadie Thompson. Her frilly clothes and her unhinged way of walking make it obvious, as soon as Sadie Thompson reaches the rain-drenched island of Pago Pago, that she is rough and probably ready. As a result, the soldiers on the island, particularly Sergeant Tim O'Hara, swarm around her while Mr. Hamilton, a professional reformer, eyes her with increasing disfavor. When he learns that Sadie Thompson is wanted, by the San Francisco police, for thievery, he licks his lips and quickly arranges to send her there. Sadie curses, weeps, then, infected by Mr. Hamilton's writhing persuasions, prays and becomes penitent. But her readiness to accept punishment for past offences is suddenly destroyed when Mr. Hamilton allows a carnal appetite to temper his desire to save her soul. Sadie Thompson, once more arrayed like a lily of the red light district, comes out of her room the next morning full of wickedness and laughter; when she hears that Mr. Hamilton has cut his throat out of dismay and self-hatred, she becomes serious for a moment. Then with a broad smile, she agrees to marry Tim O'Hara.

All this bears an almost exact resemblance to the plot of Rain, as played for two years on the Manhattan stage, or to the plot of Sadie Thompson, famed W. Somerset Maugham's story, from which both play and cinema were concocted. There are certain minor differences. Lest stupid cinemaddicts should be perturbed, for example, Hamilton is no longer called "Reverend," no longer equipped with a turn-around collar.

Lionel Barrymore makes himself sufficiently distasteful as the sad and, in the film version, definitely sadistic reformer. Raoul Walsh, who was responsible for the excellently muddy What Price Glory, acts neatly as Tim O'Hara, in addition to ably directing the picture. Sadie Thompson is Gloria Swanson. Too toothsome in early sequences, too swaggering and merry, she soon tones down and gives one of the best performances of her much-heralded screen career. 13 Washington Square. By a coincidence, Actress Zazu Pitts, who is mildly concerned in, and Melville Brown, who directed Buck Privates (see below) are both connected, in the same capacities, with 13 Washington Square, which had a contemporaneous Manhattan opening.

This coincidence is almost all that makes 13 Washington Square worth remarking.

For the rest, it starts with a great slamming of social registers and much peering, through lorgnettes, at the butcher's daughter whom a De Peyster, no less, is going to marry. Then, taking a deep breath, it goes mystery; shutters slam, not social registers, and ugly faces peer through windows. Finally, the master crook, Deacon Pyecroft, is reformed by love for a good woman--who is that long-celebrated actress, Alice Joyce.

Buck Privates. Lya de Putti, who, with Emil Jannings, was seen in Variety, whirling in dizzy arcs on the trapezes of love and sorrow, now plays a faintly comic role in a rather foolish U. S. soldier-boy cinema. A demure, unprepossessing pacifist, wearing a huge head of false hair, she falls in love with a boisterous buck private named John Smith. Pranks and jollities slide from gentle flippancy to hurly-burly burlesque. At the last, everybody begins to run around, faster and faster, taking spills and turning somersaults. Even Lya de Putti was panting at the finish, as were many members of the audience who found Buck Privates funny.

The Heart of a Clown, as every literate person knows, is breaking behind his smile. In this picture, a warmed over Swedish production, Gosta Ekman* as woebegone clown Joe Higgins, supplies an erratic but generally satisfying performance. The Haunted Ship is a mere ghost of famed Jack London's story, White and Yellow. A sea captain, detecting an amorous alliance between his wife and his first-mate, sets the former adrift in a boat and imprisons the latter in the hold of his ship. For 15 years the midnight ocean is made hideous by the howls and whinings of the imprisoned first-mate.

The captain's own son is the vehicle of fate's revenge--a revenge in which the cruel captain and his caged mate are burned up together in the hold of the haunted ship.

*No relation to Swedish Prime Minister, Carl Gustaf Ekman, onetime blacksmith (TIME, Jan. 23).