Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 31, 1931

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The Last Flight (First National) is about four aviators and a girl whose full name, so far as it is revealed to the audience, is Nikki (Helen Chandler). The time is just after the Armistice, the scene is Paris, later Lisbon. The aviators, in a state of nervous disorder produced by their experiences in the War, are trying to regain their composure by conducting a light-headed patrol of Paris barrooms. They are so engaged when they come upon Nikki near the door of a crowded saloon holding, with a rapt expression, as though it were a chalice, a cocktail glass containing a set of false teeth. In company with

Nikki the aviators continue their attempts to improve their states of minds by antics with cab-horses, hotel elevators, the furniture in Nikki's apartment. Their final and most disastrous escapade is a trip to Lisbon. Here one of the aviators jumps into a bull ring and is gored to death by the bull. Another shoots a disagreeable reporter and runs away after the shooting. A third, accidentally hit by a bullet, expires in theatrical fashion, seated in a horse-cab. The fourth aviator (Richard Barthelmess) is left with Nikki.

At times it becomes apparent that there is the material for a good, possibly a fine picture in The Last Flight but such moments only make it the more painfully clear that it is not a fine, not even a good picture. Derived from a novel by John Monk Saunders, the mood of the picture even more than the book seems to have been induced by an author who was trying to imitate Ernest Hemingway with one hand and Philip Barry with both feet. The comedy is only laughable in spots—as when Nikki changing her slippers, explains why by saying: "On account of I can run faster in red shoes." Sophisticated audiences may be pleased to detect something unusual—a subtle and difficult theme —in the film but they will sympathize with other cinemaddicts who are likely to criticize it by laughing at the wrong places.