The Millionaire (Warner). There is nothing spectacular about this picture except that George Arliss the Great, hitherto always decked out in fancy dress for the cinema, wears plain clothes through it all and even—a good deal of the time—overalls. It is still nothing much, only a story about a millionaire whose doctor makes him retire from his business, the manufacture of automobiles, and go to California to rest. Idleness makes him sick, so he sneaks out of his fine house and, under an assumed name, buys a half interest in a filling station. He goes to work at the filling station every day and when he comes home he hides his overalls, tells lies about where he has been. In the end he beats out the man who runs the filling station across the street. His partner marries his daughter. Quietly literate dialog by Booth Tarkington helps the effect, but it is always Arliss who gives the little picture distinction. He finds many things to do that make moments and the character come alive: mummery with the medicine, which he carefully measures out. and then throws through the window; his manner with his young partner (David Manners) whom he promotes as a suitor for his daughter by pretending, with his wife, to oppose him; little bits of business to express an old man's eccentric love of the spectacular. It is a picture unremarkable except that it is perfectly done and that it possesses a quality rare in cinema products, the quality of charm. Typical shot: George Arliss filling his wife's car with gas, and making it funny.
Strangers May Kiss (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This is one of those handsomely staged, well-acted, rather silly productions which confound critics who try to reveal their silliness. The story is by Ursula Parrott, author of famed Ex-Wife; it will probably gross several million dollars. Norma Shearer is a working girl who says, "A girl may kiss and ride on as well as any man." Yet when Neil Hamilton, her journalist lover, companion of an illicit weekend in Mexico, says a casual goodbye to her, she is seen in one of those rapid sequences indicating a shattering of feminine morale—broken scenes in which Miss Shearer dances in the arms of successive admirers, always to the accompaniment of a shrill, annoying laughter that is the keynote of the picture. The dialog is wretched. Most tiresome shot: Robert Montgomery's half-filled cocktail glass.