Cinema: The New Pictures: Dec. 18, 1933

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Counsellor at Law (Universal). George Simon (John Barrymore) is a talented criminal lawyer, happy in his profession but less fortunate in his home life. This set of circumstances provokes him, before the picture is over, to make a suicidal dash for the window of his deluxe office. A conservative rival has threatened to have him disbarred for framing an alibi for a petty thief ten years before. Simon has thwarted this move by discovering the rival's mistress and illegitimate child but his triumph is spoiled by the actions of Mrs. Simon (Doris Kenyon). Instead of staying with her husband in the crisis of his career, she has boarded a boat for Europe. Moreover, when Lawyer Simon, sitting alone in his dark office, telephones the pier to tell her his good news, he learns she is not traveling alone. As he throws open his window, Lawyer Simon hears a noise behind him. It is his faithful secretary (Bebe Daniels). A moment later the telephone rings with news of a new case. He does not jump.

A full-length portrait, done with all the emphasis on unity of time and place that is currently in fashion, Counsellor at Law shows its subject against a single background, the glittering onyx and aluminum offices of Simon & Tedesco (Onslow Stevens). Playwright Elmer Rice, who adapted his own successful play, surrounded his study of Lawyer Simon with sketches of his associates and friends. Old Mrs. Simon wobbles into her son's office at odd moments, chattering in dialect. Lawyer Simon's stepchildren are nasty urchins who despise him for an illbred Jew. His secretary worships him. Not so a fervent young Communist (Vincent Sherman) with a broken head who convincingly berates Lawyer Simon as a traitor to his class. The only flaw to be found in John Barrymore's gothically elaborate characterization of a dramatic personage in a forceful, facile story is the fact that he never for an instant seems to be the Jew he is supposed to be. Good shot: a plaintively self-conscious clerk inviting Lawyer Simon's secretary out to lunch.

The Women in His Life (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Like George Simon in Counsellor at Law, the hero of this picture, Ernest Barringer (Otto Kruger), is a criminal lawyer. However, if the two were arguing a case, the odds would be on Simon. Barringer has quick wits but he is a sentimentalist and a solitary drinker. These faults lead him into easily imagined predicaments. When a young girl (Irene Hervey) requests him to defend her father for killing her stepmother, Barringer glances at a photograph of the stepmother and utters a low neurotic moan. She is his onetime wife, whose portrait, for a decade, he has kept among the bottles in his desk. By the time he is ready to organize his defense, the girl's father has been twice tried and condemned to death. He is in the death house at Sing Sing and it is only by pointing a revolver at the real murderer, a gangster who first stole Mrs. Barringer's affections, that Barringer saves his client's life with only 20 seconds to spare.