The New Pictures

Cain and Artem (Amkino). This adaptation of one of Maxim Gorky's stories shows the fellowship of three people--a giant, a Jew, a fishmonger's wife--in a miserable town beside a Rus-sian river. Theirs is a fellowship of rejection: the giant does not know what to do with his strength; the woman is in disgrace because she is unfaithful to her husband and because she was a beggar when she married; everyone in the marketplace cheats the Jew and spits on him. The bond that draws slowly tighter, pulling them together, although not strong enough to keep them so, is a common rebellion, a disgust for the violent life of the town square, which the Jew and the woman have long shared, and which the woman gradually pushes into the fuddled head of her lover, the big longshoreman. There are times in the earlier sequences, when rebellion can be seen working in these cells living in the exuberant slime of the marketplace, working changes in them like electro-magnetism altering the composition of molecules. Then the picture seems great, with the pressure and pulse of a tremendous story. But the promise of the early development is never realized. The fate of the characters is indecisive; the rebellion that has stirred them dies out in action of steadily diminishing vitality, adulterated with the propaganda-ingredient which is as inevitable in current Soviet films as the trademark of any commercial product, and of about the same artistic importance. Still, in spite of its faults, in spite of a photography sometimes just right and sometimes so overvividly alive that the images cluster into meaningless visual hurricanes or swirl away on independent sprees, Cain and Artem is not far behind the great Amkino products of the past. Best shot: the tug of war between two local strongmen, who, each tied to one end of a rope, stand on opposite houseroofs and try to pull each other off.

Cain and Artem, directed by P. P. Betrov-Bytov, is silent, with a wonderfully effective musical accompaniment.

Shadow of the Law (Paramount). This crook story might have been made into almost any kind of cinema--absolute nonsense, or a fair program piece, or, as has happened, into highly successful and entertaining melodrama. Between the time when Powell kills a man accidentally, and goes to. jail for life for a murder he has not committed--a murder which can be explained only by the woman who was in the room when it happened and who refuses to give her testimony--through Powell's prison life, his escape, the new career he makes for himself, the shadow of his past life constantly threatening him but with which he deals effectively--right up to the happy ending there is never a second when suspense has been neglected or overemphasized, or when the telling loses its quick, easy rhythm or becomes incredible. Best shot: Powell pushing his hands into a mill-roller to tear the skin off his police-recorded fingertips.

In Gay Madrid (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Since the action takes place almost entirely in gay Santiago, the title is as silly as the rest of this picture. It presents Ramon Novarro as a Spanish college boy and Ramon Novarro's pleasant but over-rated tenor voice in two sentimental ballads, "Into My Heart, Querida'' and "Dark "Night." The big moment comes when a rival of Novarro's discovers in his rooms someone who is cautiously referred to as a "disreputable woman." Except for Novarro and Dorothy Jordan, the cast is bad. Typical shots: wineshop drinking songs, balcony serenades.

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