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Accused of murder by the dead patient's wife, Dumartin's first reaction is simple, physical flight. As a means of running away from himself, this is ineffective until, when he is looking down from a bridge, the reflection of his face in the water offers his subconscious mind the solution it wants: he can cease to be Dumartin by the simple expedient of supposing that the real Dr. Dumartin is the reflection in the water. To substantiate this comforting illusion, Dumartin calls to his reflection, finally jumps into the water to find it. When he is pulled out, his fantasy search for Dumartin continues because the only way it could end would be for him to admit to himself his own identity. In the Basle hospital, Professor Tscherko tries ineffectually to break through his subordinate's formidable psychosis, fails because he does not understand it. Eventually, Dumartin's colleague, Dr. Wendt (Tom Kraa), who has more than an inkling of what is wrong, finds a cure which, as simple as the trick which enabled Dumartin's dementia to begin, erases it by removing its motive.
For the mechanical efficiency of the cinema industry, abroad as well as in the U. S., there are unhappy penalties. One is a reluctance to experiment. Author Leo Lapaire, after trying in vain to interest continental producers in his story, wrote the screen play himself, got Composer Anton Profes to write a brilliant score, organized his own company, paid his highly efficient actors with rights to share in the picture's profits. The Eternal Mask won a prize, for "originality of theme," at last summer's Venice Exposition. Last week, released in the U. S. with English subtitles, it was hailed by critics as the ablest cinema study of mental aberration since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Men Are Not Gods (London Film) is based on the triangle of a matinee idol (Sebastian Shaw), his actress wife (Gertrude Lawrence) and a spinster secretary (Miriam Hopkins). When the secretary breaks off her affair with him because his wife is about to have a child, he resolves on that stage-worn device—actually killing his wife when as Othello he is smother ing her as Desdemona. This time, how ever, Desdemona lives to reconquer her Othello.
Miscast as a morbidly jealous wife, Gertrude Lawrence manages to give her role a lynx-eyed dignity which is an excellent foil for the brittle vibrance of Miriam Hop kins.
Black Legion (Warner). Frank Taylor (Humphrey Bogart), machine-shop worker, has just made arrangements to buy a new car for his wife Ruth (Erin O'Brien-Moore) when he learns that the foreman's job he was counting on has gone to a young Pole. His disappointment makes him susceptible when invited to join a secret organization whose purpose is to prevent foreigners from taking jobs away from U. S. workmen. Ensuing developments, derived from the activities of Detroit's "Black Legion," make the pic ture one of the most effective in Warner Brothers series of industrial problem plays.