(2 of 2)
Canada's own Air Marshal and World War I Ace, William Avery ("Billy") Bishop, has a role to play in the picture: awarding wings to 1,000 R.C.A.F. cadets. They are an international force (Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, etc.), and the camera pauses to scan their faces: young, fresh, earnest, consolingly cocksure.
Our Russian Front (Artkino). Skillfully put together by Director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) and Producer Joris Ivens (The Spanish Earth) from thousands of feet of Soviet newsreels and shorts, this is an informative record of the Russians' 150 days that shook the world.
The film shows the massive, single-purposed manpower of Russia at work backing up the fighters at the front: workers threshing the grain a step ahead of the Nazis, child sentries in the wheat fields, elders evacuating villages to draw the Luftwaffe's sting, new roads and railroads inching through the Urals, factories, scientists, guerrillas, the scorched earth-all the war-going activities of a people who have found out what they are fighting for.
Although Our Russian Front must be only a raw foretaste of documentaries yet to come out of World War II, it shows what strong meat those future documentaries will be.
Design for Scandal (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is a libel on the U.S. bench. It exhibits Jurisprudence (tall, dark and handsome Rosalind Russell, a female judge) knuckling under to Cupid (tall, dark and handsome Walter Pidgeon, a reporter). This farcical victory is won by Newsman Pidgeon over Judge Russell after she has awarded his employer's (Edward Arnold) wife so much alimony that he has to earn $18,000 more a month to pay it and has to send Pidgeon to frame the judge, into the bargain. Characteristically, the judge won't admit that she loves the reporter except under cross-examination in court.
This is the sort of picture that Hollywood can turn out standing on its head. It has its moments, but they are scarcely worth waiting for.