Picturegoer (1922)

JUNE 1922 THt PICTUR&GOtR 51 /^rime and criminals form the sub^y ject of the larger part of this month's releases. There are fewer (British films than usual, and not a great many cowboy stories. Max jLinder's long comedy. Seven Years' \Bad Luck, is first-rate farcical entertainment, and Wally Reid and Hebe Daniels may be seen in a light and amusing trifle, Sick-a-Bed, in which ;Reid plays the invalid to oblige a friend, and falls in love with a pretty •lurse. Many well-known plays appear n film form. Barrie's What Every Woman Knows introduces two exceptionally clever players in Lois Wilson and Conrad Nagel, and is the >nly American film to date that has baught the true Barrie touch in both icting and sub-titles. The story, also, pas remained unchanged. A British ■ersion of this play was released not • great many months ago, with Hilda 'revelyan in her original part of Maggie Shand." This was, however, n a smaller scale than the current f lelease. "^ on way Tearle looks exceedingly worried throughout the five reels f I he Road to Ambition. True, he as plenty to worry about, for he plays steel-worker who, becoming a milonaire, marries a girl who only loves is money, and has to fight hard before he finds happiness ['he early scenes show Conway as the man in charge of a huge process machine in a foundrj These settings are excellent, and pro vide the background for one of the many lights with which the action is besprinkled. Conway Tearle is good as the hero, and Frances Dixon makes a'pretty and natural heroine:, and the " shots," at the commencement of the film, showing various departments of a big steel works and foundry, provide good atmosphere. Usually it is certain that a Douglas Fairbanks comedy will have a hero who is quite unusually athletic. Also one expects — and gets an ori ginal sense of comedy and inventive ness. In The Nut, Fairbanks has a very thin story, not so good as that of many of his other films, but bright and amusing because of the funny stunts and cleverly developed incidents. It is farcical stuff, at best, but " Doug's " automatic dresser alone is worth going to see. The lazy hero who owns it is carried out of bed along a moving platform, every item of his toilet being attended to by automatic means, until he emerges in full sartorial glory. This " Charlie Jackson is described as an eccentric young fellow, and Fairbanks makes him all that and more. Little Mary Pickford Rupp I .hi ne l 'ii klord s daughter) makes a fleeting appearance in one scene ol Tht Nut, and we ha\e Mary I'ickford's own word for it that keen eyed picture lovers will be able to see hei also iii one or two of the crowd scenes Marguerite de la Motte is the heroine, and lovely Barbara la Mann has a smaller role. Hphe story ol Tin Idol oj tht North 1 was written especiallj for Doroth\ Dalton, and gives her one ol those passionate, dominant roles which suil her so well Dorothy's first success was as a dance-hall girl in a story of the Klondyke, called The Flume oj the Yukon, which showed her as a somewhat primitive daughter of the wild North. Her current release is her best feature since that early success, and one cannot help wondering why la Dalton docs not specialise in these roles once more. The tempestuous heroine of The Teaser, as The Idol of the North was first titled, makes playthings of the rough miners in an Alaskan town. They, in revenge, marry her to an inebriated Easterner. The girl, however, makes the best of her bad bargain and regenerates him. Atmosphere, tense action, and good suspense atone for a story which is not highly original. A good few rough-and-tumble fights and strong