(3 of 4)
Rain (United Artists), based on Somerset Maugham's story and more famed play, made memorable by the late Actress Jeanne Eagels, tries to justify the ways of Heroine Sadie Thompson to Man. Director Lewis Milestone has made semi-respectable, unexciting, the old sure-fire melodrama. Of the hot Pacific island where the rain monotonously rains and the characters get crescendo jitters, Milestone gets no illusion. The characters are not damp to the skin. Their clothes do not stick clammily to their flanks. The food does not spoil. Green mold does not sprout on everything. The heat is not heat at all. Faces are unsweated. Appetites are healthv. The weather does not. as in the play, exhaust the characters of energy, ravel out their nerves. Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford) is no longer a harlot. She is a dull girl with an unfortunate past. Joan Crawford works hard but looks too wholesome and collegiate to suit the part. The basic trouble really is that Rain is presented as a classic, not as the 10-20-30 melodrama of popping sex and fanaticism that Maugham wrote. Typical shot: a closeup of the name Golden Gate on the side of a ship, spelled out letter by letter, three times in succession, possibly to create suspense.
A Successful Calamity (Warner Bros.), cinematized for George Arliss, is neatly based on Clare Kummer's demoded "situation'' play of misunderstandings, tricks, plots and counterplots. George Arliss is a famed Wall Street broker, important enough to be congratulated by the President of the U. S. (shown anonymously from behind). Lonely for his wife (Mary Astor), son and daughter, he learns from his butler (Grant Mitchell) that ''the poor don't get to go much." He interrupts his family's frivolings with polo and pianists by pretending that he is ruined. They stay home with him and have a lovely time. The deception works overtime and earns George Arliss another million dollars behind his back. Pressure ennobles everybody; the story shows them all good enough to be poor though in fact richer than ever. George Arliss, looking like a wise, kind turtle, is quiet and expert as the kind of millionaire everybody would like to be. Typical shot: loyal Butler Mitchell matter-of-factly giving Arliss his life savings to carry him through the crisis, making audiences sniffle.
Maedchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan), last spring's most discussed European cinema, was rejected by the New York State Board of Censors on the ground that it too intimately explored female adolescence. U. S. sponsors finally convinced the censors it was a story of new Germany v. old Germany. They added English subtitles and presented it.