The Crimson Playgoer

Usually, when a stage play is made into a talking picture, the result is nothing more than a photograph of what was designed for the legitimate stage. "The Criminal Code," which is now playing at the University, is distinctly an exception to this rule, for here the movie director has removed all of the elements peculiar to the stage and has adapted the plot with considerable skill to the rapidity and scope of the screen. He has not allowed himself to be confined by the picture frame of a theatre, but instead has incorporated into the sound and film the whole large scene of prison life.

The plot has to do with the effect of imprisonment upon a young man who is the victim of circumstance. Regardless of whether or not it is true to existing conditions, the picture is constructed of scenes showing the conflict of the ethical codes of the authorities and the prisoners and their means of enforcing these conflicting codes. On the one hand there is the power of the armed few pitted against concentrated, passive resistance of the mob. By a judicious use of the camera both impressionistically and realistically the feeling of the situation is made more tense than would be possible in any stage production.

Walter Huston as Brady, the warden, interprets his part with a vigor and grasp that almost give a feeling of personal contact. The wronged young man played by Phillips Holmes is also a living figure. Boris Karloff as Galloway, the hardened criminal, presents what is probably the best acting in the whole production. He does not attempt to show merely a realistic figure, but instead he concentrates his efforts in creating the character he is presenting and in that he is highly successful.

The excellent acting of the cast against the intensely dramatic background provided by the director combined to produce a thoroughly good talking picture.

The other picture, "The Princess and the Plumber" is frankly unadulterated drip. There is the usual creaking comedy, old castles, symphony orchestras hidden under sofas, and bad dialogue whined vociferously through the nose by Charles Farrell and Maureen O'Sullivan.