5 SEPTEMBER 1931, Page 12

Cinema More Crime PEOPLE have begun to write to the

papers saying that we are getting too many films about gangsters, which is perfectly true. Hollywood knows a good theme when it sees one, and seldom sees anything else for some time. A little while ago we had too many films about aviation, and before that too many films about the War, and before that too many films about " back-stage life." Once—incredible though it seems now—we were complaining that we were being surfeited with films about men in two-gallon hats, men who recommend themselves, in retrospect, even more by their silence than by their strength, men constantly to be found on sky-lines, men with hearts as tender as their horses' backs must have been sore—in short, cowboys. All these different sorts of films were sensational, and therefore liable to have a bad effect on people—especially young people—who saw too many of them. The gangster film, which is more violently sen- sational than any of them, and lacks their partially-redeeming loyalty to such institutions as Mother Love, The Open Air Life, or Remorse, has been charged with exerting a correspond- ingly more baneful influence.

Whether this is so seems to me doubtful. Gang warfare is deficient in glamour. The studied inhumanity of its protagon- ists, their depressing surroundings, their extremely unsporting methods—none of these is calculated to appeal even to the most impressionable. Robin Hood and Raffles and their numerous descendants were a far better advertisement for a life of crime, and on this side of the Atlantic their fantastic exploits have a more compelling plausibility than the incredible realities of commercialized brutality which Hollywood now presents almost undoctored. But gangsters do exist, and their existence constitutes a major social problem in America. Out of every ten people who watch their activities on the screen, it is possible that one may have a momentary impulse to turn, in later life, to a profession which consists largely of shooting your colleagues in the back when they are looking the other way. The other nine will at least have been given something to think about ; and I swear the paralysis of a judicial system is as wholesome a food for thought as the morals of a sheik.

The most recent of the gangster films, The Secret Six, now being shown at the Empire, is a little ponderous by comparison with Quick Millions and City Streets. The photography is less inspired, the movement less irresistible, and the theme handled without that pleasantly astringent touch of satire which distinguished those two films. Scorpio's origin in the stockyards might well have been made the excuse for some- thing better than a few perfunctory " shots " of steaming cattle. His progress down the primrose path of crime is more fully illustrated. He butchers his way to the leadership of a gang ; is arrested ; tried for murder ; scandalously acquitted by a packed jury ; and finally brought to book by the Secret Six, who are all high-minded American citizens of the best type, though—whether from modesty or a sense of fun, I was unable to discover—they put on masks whenever their friends came to see them. Mr. Beery, as their arch-foe and victim, Scorpio, has little difficulty in being formidable, but he is at his best in the earlier scenes, where his sense of comedy gets its chance. The other acting is adequate, though a little stiff in places. Somewhere in the background—not quite far enough in the background—there is an ash-blonde with no histrionic ability whatsoever. The film is worth seeing if you have seen nothing