The New Pictures

Prison Without Bars (United Artists--Alexander Korda). For reasons which are growing increasingly mysterious, French cinema producers seem to have become obsessed with the problem of female institutions. Model for all such pictures was, of course, the German Maedchen in Uniform, but in this the theme, more or less intrinsic to the background, was Lesbianism. French producers have not been obliged to resort to any such spectacular embellishments. Pictures like Club de Femmes, La Maternelle, Forty Little Mothers, Ballerina, make it apparent that French producers are interested in seminaries, kindergartens and sewing circles solely on their own merits, that they take a certain pride in being able to tell any kind of story from murder to romance in terms of regimented femininity. Prison Without Bars, a great European success in its original version last year, has been admirably remade in English. It differs from its predecessors principally in that this time the institution involved happens to be a reformatory in which the superintendent stands in greater need of reformation than the inmates.

Responsible for the simultaneous screen success of Merle Oberon, Binnie Barnes and Wendy Barrie in The Private Life of Henry VIII, Producer Korda now presents his latest protegee: scared-looking, 18-year-old Corinne Luchaire. As an incubator for stars, Prison Without Bars is unlikely to be another Henry VIII, but U.S. cinemaddicts may well want to see more of Mile Luchaire. Most alarming shot: inmates getting drunk on alcohol purloined from the medicine chest.

The Flying Irishman (RKO Radio) is primarily an attempt to cash in at the box office the fame achieved by Aviator Douglas Corrigan in his famed "wrong way" flight to Ireland last July. Unlike most samples of its genre, it succeeds in being an unusually likable and honest little picture, for Corrigan is one of the worst actors who ever appeared on the screen. Indeed, cast as himself in a reasonably factual account of his own extraordinarily humdrum career, Corrigan does not act at all.

Only for the first few minutes does his shy, worried presence on the screen, in the midst of a cast of seasoned professionals like Paul Kelly, Robert Armstrong and Cora Witherspoon, threaten to be embarrassing. As the story proceeds, examining Corrigan's weary scrimpings to pay for flying lessons and then for his own plane; his painfully ineffectual efforts to become a transport pilot; finally, the well-planned exploit which brought him fame, his failings as an actor become the virtues of realism. Thus, The Flying Irishman is raised from the level of a routine Hollywood quickie to that of a sincere and curiously effective cinematic document.

During the making of The Flying Irishman, its star failed utterly to adjust himself to the behavior expected of an international celebrity. At his first studio press conference, he offended his employers by explaining that his pay was $50,000, after the studio had announced it as $100,000. Corrigan drove to & from the studio in his 1928 Franklin, once delayed shooting for 30 minutes when it broke down en route. His lunches in the commissary rarely cost more than 25-c-. Corrigan got his first view of The Flying Irishman last fortnight, week before its national release on St. Patrick's Day. He had avoided seeing the rushes lest they make him selfconscious.

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