The New Pictures

Sable Cicada (Hsin Hwa Motion Picture Co.). In 1938. foreign pictures, by & large, were better than Hollywood pictures. In 1939, U. S. audiences will doubtless see more foreign pictures of all sorts than ever before. Sable Cicada, released in Manhattan last fortnight, is one of the first Chinese pictures made for foreign devils as well as for domestic showings. Likely to be shown only in a few small theatres in big cities, it is nevertheless important as a symptom of an ambassadorial trend.

China has five major cinema-producing companies, about 300 theatres, which show both Chinese and Hollywood films. Three of the Chinese companies make pictures in Cantonese (South China) dialect, two in classical Mandarin (North China) dialect. Chinese movie stars are borrowed from the Chinese stage and music halls. Average picture-production cost is about $15,000. Invasion by Japan has not interrupted Chinese cinema production. While Sable Cicada, which took two years to make, was in production at Shanghai, the studio was bombed twice. (Studio officials kept blueprints of the sets so that, in case of serious damage, they could be promptly rebuilt.)

Most Chinese pictures concern contemporary domestic life, contain a derby-&-mustache stock character derived from Charlie Chaplin. Sable Cicada, however, is a $125,000 superproduction about doings of the Han dynasty in the Third Century

A.D. For Occidental audiences, the heroine of Sable Cicada (Violet Koo) represents a combination of Pocahontas, Martha Washington, Molly Pitcher and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. Foster daughter of an elderly statesman, she patriotically undertakes to relieve his political difficulties by becoming simultaneously concubine to the fat old Prime Minister and fiancee to the Prime Minister's handsome young generalissimo, thus causing internal combustion that brings in a new ministry.

Equipped with English subtitles, Sable Cicada is an ingratiating curio, remarkable for sets, costumes and genial Chinese mugging by I. E. Koo, as the lustful Prime Minister. Most censorable sequence: mischievous Cicada pretending to commit suicide and then lying to both admirers about her reasons.

They Made Me a Criminal (Warner Bros.) is not, despite its title, a picture about unhappy gangsters. It is a straight forward story of regeneration by fresh air and pure love. Johnnie (John Garfield), a middleweight prize fighter suspected of murder, of which he is innocent rather by good luck than good management, runs away to an Arizona date farm, where he encounters Gloria Dickson and the Dead End kids. Result: he is transformed from a mean-tempered hooligan into a model of good behavior.

Though They Made Me a Criminal is little better than a narrative stencil, Di rector Busby Berkeley and his cast gave the picture enough vigor, detail and pace to make it first-rate entertainment. Good sequence : Johnnie and the Dead End kids going swimming in an irrigation tank, and getting trapped when the owner starts let ting out the water.

Hailed as the No. i male cinema discov ery of 1938 for his performance as Mickey Borden in Four Daughters, Actor John Garfield is a blunt-featured young product of New York City's East Side and The Bronx. A problem child, he was sent at twelve to a school run by Angelo Patri, who allowed him to concentrate on dram atics and English.

When he was 19, Garfield hitchhiked across the U. S., stopping off to work for two months on a California fruit farm and for nine days in an Austin, Tex. jail.

When he got back to the East he went to Vermont, got a job acting in a summer camp, followed it by a bit part in a road company. A meeting with Clifford Odets led to better parts in Group Theatre productions, the leading role in Having Wonderful Time, a part in Golden Boy, which got him his Hollywood contract.

Off screen, Actor Garfield, whose first name is really Jules, is undistinguished-looking, slow-spoken and, like many other prosperous young actors, an amateur left-wing politician. His present seven-year Hollywood contract contains a clause permitting him to leave on 60 days' notice whenever he wants to act on Broadway, a privilege of which he has not yet availed himself. His next picture will be Juarez, with Bette Davis and Paul Muni.

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