Cinema: The New Pictures: Jan. 2, 1939

Dawn Patrol (Warner Bros.). Fortunately for cinemaddicts, as Hollywood finds it increasingly hard to say new things, it says the old ones increasingly well. This picture certainly gives no new account of the Royal Flying Corps. Its members fly "canvas coffins," drink "to the next man to die," and grimly say "Right!" when they mean "Wrong!" just as they have been doing in the movies ever since the first Dawn Patrol was made eight years ago. Nonetheless, by the time Captain Courtney (Errol Flynn) and Lieutenant Scott (David Niven) have shared their last toast and their last battle, audiences are likely to feel that the familiar sound-track crescendo of zooming motors and breaking bottles has rarely been heard to better effect.

Dawn Patrol was rushed to completion last autumn during the Munich crisis. Some of its cast, including Actors Niven, Basil Rathbone and Michael Brooke, are reserve officers who expected to be called to the colors before they finished. Most of the air shots in Dawn Patrol were lifted intact from the 1930 edition. Good shot: Courtney, whose minute squadron on the Marne front has been losing a man a day for weeks, reacting with an absent-minded nod, while he reads a newspaper, to the news that an old friend has been killed.

Kentucky (Twentieth Century-Fox). Kentucky concerns a feud between two proud Southern families, romance between the great-grandson (Richard Greene) of one and the great-granddaughter (Loretta Young) of the other, and the question of whether Postman or Blue Grass will win the Kentucky Derby. It treats these matters with such profound faith in their importance that it is likely to charm even critics who feel that the cinema industry should be more than a museum.

The fattest supporting role in Kentucky is naturally that of a hot-tempered, horse-breeding old Kentucky squire. The picture's greatest virtue is that Walter Brennan plays him, chin whiskers and all, as though Peter Goodwin were a real human being, not a stock character. Typical sequence: Peter Goodwin selecting, from a collection of mediocre two-year-olds, the one that has "the look of eagles in his eye."

The Beachcomber (Paramount) contains the most unusual cinema hero of the year. Shiftless, insolent, concupiscent Ginger Ted (Charles Laughton) makes himself a nuisance to the kindhearted controleur of the tropical Dutch island where he lives in a disreputable beach shack. He also takes pleasure in insulting a hard-working British female missionary (Elsa Lanchester*) who tries to save his soul.

Admirers of Somerset Maugham will be pleased to observe that the plot of this picture, adapted from his short story The Vessel of Wrath, greatly resembles that of Rain, with genders reversed. Thus, though Ginger Ted eventually undergoes a slight regeneration, the missionary's character is completely revolutionized, while the poor contróleur gets a reward usually reserved in the cinema for knaves.