Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 16, 1929

Richthofen: The Red Knight of the Air (German). Few stories of the War are better fitted to make a movie than the story of Baron Manfred von Richthofen who shot down more than 80 Allied aviators and was found one day between the hostile lines before Amiens sitting dead in his plane which he had guided to a perfect landing.* The material is still open for treatment as nothing much is done with it in this picture. Instead of using what is really known about Richthofen: his innate love of the chase, his early cavalry training, his duel with the English ace, Major Lanoe G. Hawker, whose plane he brought down after a fierce, magnificent combat, the producers waste three-quarters of the film telling a poppycock love story about one of his friends. Most of the photography is poor. One of the rare good shots: newsreel of the actual crowd waiting in Berlin streets to see Richthofen's body carried by. Gold Diggers of Broadway (Warner). Avery Hopwood's comedy about a rich man who tried to save his heir from a chorus girl is the framework of an indifferent screen musical show. As a technical accomplishment, Gold Diggers of Broadway has virtues: it is well-dressed, ambitious, brightly colored, energetic; it has some passable tunes in it, and the chorus dances nicely. It fails because the story-framework is not adequate to the demands made on it. Expert playing by Ina Claire and directing by David Belasco got The Gold Diggers across on the legitimate stage. Miss Claire's role is taken in the picture by a good-looking but not particularly talented young woman named Nancy Welford. Inevitably the feeble gaiety intended in the reversal of the first situation, with the rescuing guardian succumbing to the showgirl, is smothered by the constant singing, by the manipulation of ballets in bright, blurry costumes, by Winnie Lightner's noisy wisecracks.