Cinema: The New Pictures Jun. 30, 1930

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The Lady of Scandal (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). When a good play is turned into a picture by the photographing of its acts, scene by scene, it loses more than the artifice of flesh and blood. Its framework stiffens. Graces that shone brilliantly behind the footlights seem antiquated in the more fluid form for which they were not intended. This comedy of Lonsdale's, The High Road, is not really oldfashioned. Its situation—the consternation of an English family when faced with the possible marriage of one of its scions with a Gaiety-girl—is ingeniously handled. Ruth Chatterton and Basil Rathbone act it as well as you can conceive of its being acted. But somehow its balance and unity have been altered. Faithful to its original, The Lady of Scandal is fair entertainment, but it never becomes a moving picture. Dénouement—Miss Chatterton, forced to live on trial for six months in the house of her prospective in-laws, falling in love with her fiance's cousin.

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