The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary
(May Robson). Aunt Mary's nephew enters an automobile race and she clambers into the car to feed him pumpkin pie while he roars around the track. The heroine (Phyllis Haver) fears this will be the death of the 70-year-old lady, so she commandeers an ambulance and tears after them. In the end, everybody is feeling fine, including the audience and a patient who is discovered crawling out of the ambulance.
The Way to Strength and Beauty.
The German people, as many know, have gone off on a physical culture twig. This Ufa film shows them at it—dancing in the valleys, chinning on the mountain tops, swinging, stretching, running, generally intensifying and multiplying the daily dozen.
Twelve Miles Out (John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, Joan Crawford). A fine pair of illicit international traffickers are John Gilbert and Ernest Torrence. In Europe they smuggle firearms and diamonds. In the U. S. they are liquor barons. Being rivals in business, in facial attraction, in drinking capacity, they love to cause each other physical and financial embarrassment. The final episode finds Mr. Gilbert piloting his rumrunner off the coast of Long Island, with a charming society girl (Joan Crawford) on board against her will. Out of the night comes Mr. Torrence, with his rough-and-rum-necks, to capture Mr. Gilbert & crew. There is a grand and gory fight just before the U. S. Coast Guard ship arrives. The rivals die in each other's arms, agreeing that each is "a damn good guy." Miss Crawford's kiss is on Mr. Gilbert's lips. It is a good picture.
Man Power. The soloist is Richard Dix; the accompanist, Mary Brian, and the main theme based on that good old folksong—how the hero fixed up the heroine's papa's business. This was accomplished by driving the Stoddard tractor over oozy roads in time to arrive at the dam with tons of dynamite before the flood washed out the entire' valley. That "sells" the population on Papa Stoddard's tractors and closes the hero's deal for the heroine's hand. It is the kind of summer orchestration that needs no encore.
The Power of Darkness. The Moscow Art Theatre actors portray in cinema based on Tolstoi's drama the slow writhing of Russian peasants in the shackles of ignorance under the bludgeoning of Fate. Whether drunk, sober, at home in their hovels, or on the icy road to Siberia, the characters always convey the tragedy of aspiration groping under a clod.
Babe Comes Home. George Herman Ruth, variously known as the Home Run King, the Biffing Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the Mogul of Mayhem, etc., does poorly in a film recounting the life story of a baseball player. Mr. Ruth is not even qualified to hold a cinema actor's lipstick.
Tartuffe. Probably no actor alive can make one physiognomy do for two faces better than Emil Jannings, so that it is fitting he should act the hypocrite of Moliere's story. Unfortunately, his ability to make himself look repulsive while duping the helpless Orgon, is hardly enough to galvanize the play.