Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (Universal). A stratospherical chapter of the 15-piece adventures of the fearless Flash, this is a Grade A cinemedition of the famed King Features strip. Chesty Flash (Larry Crabbe, onetime famed Olympic free-style swimmer) works desperately to save humanity on Earth from destruction by a nitrogen-destroying lamp erected on Mars.
Since the silent-film days the cinema has kept fairly close to earth. To figure out how men in other worlds might look was, to the vaulting cineminds who conceived pictures like A Trip to Mars, By Rocket to the Moon, Jupiter's Thunderbolt, a mild exercise in ingenuity. But how such out-planeters might talk, especially in conversation with men from Hollywood, has lately presented a weighty problem in linguistics. Flash Gordon is fortunate enough to find some English-speaking Martians, but with true comic-strip vigor, he usually manages to make actions speak louder than words.
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Paramount) is capricious proof that impish, cheroot-chewing Ernst Lubitsch is as deft a director as ever. Foil for most of Director Lubitsch's fun-making is gawky, good-natured Gary Cooper, a wealthy, clean-shaven Bluebeard loose on the Riviera after seven short-order U. S. marriages. Believing that "Lovemaking is the red tape of marriage," he wants to marry in haste when he meets pertly marriageable Claudette Colbert. When she learns of the previous seven wives, she treats him to six months of honeyless honeymooning. When eventually remorseful Claudette is ready for surrender, Gary is fit for a strait jacket.
Airily written, amusingly scored, sprinkled with reliable supporting players, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife has more deftness than heft, loses speed in the late rounds. Best fun: Actress Colbert warding off ardent Actor Cooper's advances with a scallion breath, announcing: "I'll fight you with every vegetable at my disposal."
Mr. Moto's Gamble. Twentieth Century-Fox called Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) into the Gamble case (originally called Charlie Chan at the Ringside) after the disappearance from the Fox Western Avenue studios last January of Hon. Detective Chan (Warner Oland). One day during production he stepped out to the water cooler, failed to return, leaving the Ringside case unsolved and Twentieth Century-Fox in danger of being $100,000 out of pocket. The availability of Mr. Moto saved the $100,000, added a feather to the cap of resourceful Producer Sol M. Wurtzel. Later found at his home, Hon. Chan pleaded illness, was granted a leave of absence.
So Mr. Moto, a soft-spoken Japanese with poached-egg eyes and a thorough knowledge of jujitsu, solved some nasty criminal problems. A boxing glove soaked in poison, and a gun with a time device set up under the prize ring and pointed at Mr. Moto's seat all fitted into the pattern of a shady betting deal. Mr. Moto establishes a connection with Charlie by instructing Charlie's collegiate son, Lee Chan (Keye Luke), in a criminology class.
Current & Choice
Merrily We Live (Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray; TIME, March 14).
Mad About Music (Deanna Durbin, Herbert Marshall; TIME, March 7).
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (TIME, Dec. 27).