Cinema: The New Pictures: Dec. 26, 1938

Trade Winds (Walter Wanger—United Artists). On Nov. 24, 1935, Director Tay Garnett sailed from Los Angeles in the yacht Athene. With him he took a camera crew, a complete film laboratory. His object: a 50,000-mile round-the-world cruise to gather material for his next picture. Last week, when the result of his expedition was released as Trade Winds, audiences expected that, as a travelogue, it might be a pleasant surprise.

Trade Winds is a pleasant surprise, but not as a travelogue. By far the best things about the picture are 1) superbly funny dialogue by Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell and Frank R. Adams and 2) pleasant performances by Fredric March and Joan Bennett, who, as a brunette, looks like Hedy Lamarr. To work his material into the body of the picture, which was made in the United Artists studio, Director Tay Garnett fell back on the reliable motif of the chase: assigned to find a girl wanted by the San Francisco police, Detective Sam Wye follows her to Hawaii, catches up with her in Singapore, falls in love with her in Ceylon, marries her on a boat leaving Bombay, settles down to live with her on the Laccadive Islands.

The best to be said for Director Garnett's travel contributions is that, sprinkled through the narrative along with the antics of a highly entertaining set of minor characters, they serve to punctuate Miss Parker's jokes. Best minor part: Ralph Bellamy—who impersonated Christ in Destination Unknown, also directed by Tay Garnett—as Sam Wye's over-diligent assistant.

Ride a Crooked Mile (Paramount). The central figure of this picture is a borsch-supping, caviar-munching, Otchi-Tchornyia-singing Cossack (Akim Tamiroff). Its locale is Kansas. For this apparent contradiction there is a simple explanation. The Cossack is a cattle rustler. and cattle rustling, by old cinema tradition, is an un-American occupation pursued only by refugees from nations to which Hollywood does not export its wares.

By the time Cossack Mike Belan is trying to make a getaway from Leavenworth Penitentiary on horseback, pursued by his long-lost son (Leif Erikson), who has joined the U. S. cavalry and fallen in love with a Cossack singer (Frances Farmer), only cinemaddicts with phenomenal deductive powers will be able to keep track of the proceedings. Only unusually indulgent cinemaddicts will want to. Typical shot: Akim Tamiroff roaring at Leif Erikson in Cossack dialect while showing him how to take a Cossack Turkish bath.