The New Pictures

Port of Seven Seas (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), originally scheduled for release last April, was held up for three months by Will Hays. Since the picture's heroine not only becomes pregnant by a man who is not her husband, but later marries a kindly millionaire, Tsar Hays's concern was natural. But cinemaddicts will find only a chatty little genre study in which Wallace Beery, Frank Morgan, Maureen O'Sullivan, Director James Whale and Screenwriters Preston Sturges & Ernest Vojda make a combination of unmarried motherhood, international commerce and life along the Marseille docks seem about as turbulent as Wednesday morning in a day nursery. However, shunning both scandal and excitement, Port of Seven Seas has quiet, anecdotal charm.

Madelon, proprietor of a shellfish booth, gets herself into her predicament by overenthusiastic response to the amorous moonings of young Marius (John Beal), son of the neighborhood saloon keeper. When Marius hears the Call of the Sea, there is nothing much for Madelon to do but accept the hand of Panisse (Frank Morgan), the master sailmaker. This, when Marius comes home to roost, creates a situation that calls for delicate handling, which is supplied by Bartender Cesar (Wallace Beery). Typical sequence: Cesar, a month after Marius' departure, explaining to Panisse that he does not want or expect a letter; then, when the letter from Marius comes, persuading Madelon to read it to him.

South Riding (Alexander Korda). Sturdy competent novels about the British countryside, like that by the late Winifred Holtby from which this picture was adapted, have always found a steady mar ket among U. S. readers. South Riding offers cinemaudiences a fair chance to share their partiality. It investigates the problem (utterly novel for screen audiences) of local government in a modern, British rural community. It pursues the investigation with gusto, diligence and considerable pictorial vigor.

Author Holtby packed her book with as many people as its covers would hold -- some stock characters, some individuals of her own invention. The film retains most of them, from South Riding's closemouthed, poverty-stricken, fox-hunting squire (Ralph Richardson) to the old crone who, entering a dingy workman's shack where she is to function as house keeper, utters a classic description: "There's pigsties and pigsties but this here's a pigsty with knobs on it."

The narrative revolves on the question of replacing the shacks in which South Riding's poor live with an up-to-date housing development. By the time this comes up for final vote in the county council, its pros & cons are clear. So are all the people who are aroused over it, the schoolteacher (Edna Best) who got her job over the squire's dissenting vote; the tuberculous young reformer who proposed the housing scheme; sly Alderman Snaith, who drums up votes for a site through which his road runs; kindly old Mrs. Beddows; Squire Game's waspish little daughter; poor old Mr. Huggins who, bedeviled from all sides by Carne, Snaith and a young lady who has borne him an illegitimate daughter, can barely muster up enough courage to lead the weekly psalm singing.

The Shopworn Angel (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). When telling the story of an actress who, no better than she should be, finds spiritual redemption in her love for an unspoiled youth from the country, Hollywood treads on ground sanctified by old familiar precedent. Thus sanctified is The Shopworn Angel--first told by Dana Burnet in the Saturday Evening Post for Sept. 14, 1918, later, as a picture in 1929. Faith such as Hollywood has always shown in such stories seldom goes unrewarded. As it emerges from its previous tellings, The Shopworn Angel is still a tear jerker in the grand manner--simple, senile and heroically sentimental.

En route from the plains of Texas to a battlefield in France, Private Bill Pettigrew (James Stewart) is stationed at Camp Merritt, near New York City. One evening he collides with a limousine containing glamorous Daisy Heath (Margaret Sullavan). Unaware of the nature of her attachment to her manager (Walter Pidgeon), Private Pettigrew falls in love. Aware of the effect of a rude disillusionment, Daisy makes a brave gesture that enables Private Pettigrew to sail for France with his sublimated devotion unimpaired.

An example of Hollywood's recent Recession-prompted hunt for old stories available for revival, The Shopworn Angel illustrates one consequence: in the effort to remain consistent, the Hays organization has failed to censor material which it passed in 1929, although the characters involved scarcely meet the moral requirements of 1938's purified cinema sex life. Best sequence: Pettigrew calling on Daisy at the stage door to prove to his cynical messmates that he really knows her.

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