New Pictures

The Love of Sunya (Gloria Swanson). Samuel L. ("Roxy") Rothafel, bequeather of radio outfits to disabled veterans and radio music to the U. S., invited Manhattan celebrities to the opening of his new "cathedral of motion picture," world's largest theatre. They came--the Mayor, actors, chorines, bankers, merchants, lawyers. They beheld a vast, bronzed, Spanish Renaissance structure imposing its Moorish splendor upon the corner of Seventh Ave. and 50th St., in the backyard neighborhood of Broadway, otherwise asprawl with garages, night clubs, hotdog stands, pawn-jewelers. Inside it was golden-brown, well ventilated, pagan-like in its florid adornment. Three organists played in grand concert on a Kimball organ, which is said to have the properties of a symphony orchestra. Then came an invocation: "Ye Portals bright . . . unite us all to worship at beauty's throne." Then a dedication. All was solemn. The audience was awed. The "cathedral" looked every cent of its $10,000,000 advertised cost. The Roxy Symphony Orchestra burst into the "Star-Spangled Banner." The Mayor sprang to his feet. The audience sprang as promptly as possible considering its lap cluttered with hats, coats, canes.

After hours of preliminary tableaux, solo singing, orchestral music, ballet, the cathedral gave over to Gloria Swanson-on-screen who endured through an interminable legend in which a girl, knowing not whether to devote herself to a career as opera singer, to her lover or to a wealthy villain, discovers (in a crystal) the horrible effect of conducting herself for the sake of the career or the loveless wifehood, and thereupon marries the lover. The effect of the lover is not picturized because (according to the faith expounded ardently and ex cathedra by the subtitles) happiness is inevitable when the soul is pure.

Rubber Tires (Bessie Love). The heroine bundles her family into a rickety automobile, sets out for California and better fortune. Literally, luck is with her, for the manufacturers advertise a huge reward for return of her car. It is the first they ever made --valuable, therefore, by way of contrast. In chasing the party across the continent, the director provides good farce.

The Living Dead Man is aFrench film based on Pirandello's The Late Mattia Pascal. The amazing absurdities of the philosophical deadhead who would live, love and be irresponsible, somehow hold the screen version together in an amusing roll-and-tumble that is neither slapstick nor brilliant comedy. That Pirandello's satirical quibbles of intangibility should have been considered for picturization is even more astounding than the film's partial success.

Let It Rain (Douglas MacLean, Shirley Mason). Pants drop down, men slip on the sidewalks, a goat butts a marine off a battleship, all the principal characters chase themselves around the countryside without once stumbling into a funny situation. The hero marries the heroine.