(3 of 3)
Redemption (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This is an ambitious version of Tolstoy's play about a man who redeemed himself spiritually by sacrificing everything, even life, to his inability to make decisions. Its intention is less to popularize Tolstoy than to strengthen the prestige of Actor John Gilbert, whose first talking picture, His Glorious Night, was a failure. Gilbert declaims Fedya in a resonant, hollow voice, giving in his best scenes a lively imitation of John Barrymore and in his worst a caricature of himself in those pictures in which he made his reputation as the Screen's Greatest Lover. The photography and recording are good, but not the adaptation : Redemption might have been told with more continuity if less time had been wasted on photographic atmosphere. Typical shot: Gilbert jumping up against a garden wall in the moonlight to caress the hand of the heroine.
The Devil's Holiday (Paramount). Director Edmund Goulding usually writes his own stories and has the reputation of being able to make the stars who work for him perform brilliantly even when they have given no previous indication of brilliance. After bossing Gloria Swanson in her most recent and best picture The Trespasser, he has done an even more painstaking job for Nancy Carroll, whose previous film experience has embraced few parts more taxing than the leads in Honey and Sweetie. In The Demi's Holiday she plays a little adventuress who, in cahoots with a salesman of farm equipment, sets about fascinating the respectable son of a rich farming family. From the Chicago hotel where their meeting takes place, the story moves west to a shadowy, oldfashioned mansion on the farm lands, showing how marriage works out for the demimondaine and the rich boy whom she has married partly to get even with his brother, who tried to buy her off, and partly for the money. Goulding's dialog has shopworn stretches, but much of it is convincing and subtle. He has varied cinematic formulas enough to make The Devil's Holiday artistically effective, but not enough to impair its popular appeal. It remains a program picture, but a far better one than the average. Best shot: Nancy Carroll's thoughts about her husband revealed to the audience by a slip of the tongue when she is back in a Chicago hotel room trying to get drunk on champagne.