New that the nation is to have a truly democratic government, guarding the interests of the common people from the selfish mess of plutocratic blood-suckers, something should be done about the cinemas which Hollywood magnates foist upon the public and on the theatres. The producers appear to have at their disposal money, talent, equipment, everything, except taste and intelligence. "Blonde Venus" is a case to the point.

The theme of the picture in the problem of the custody of the child of a divorced or aspirated couple; this is a predicament common enough, yet little discussed on the stage, and it would in the proper hands adapt itself to masterly treatment. In "Blonde Venus" this theme is ruined by lurid, florid, tabloid handing which carries the mother from the arms of her Husband, to stardom in a revue, to prostitution, to stardom in a revue, to prostitution, to stardom in a revue, and with the leit motif of "a little child shall lead them," back to the arms of her husband. The whole amounts to exactly nothing as an intelligent or entertaining treatment of the problem.

If the movie is saved from being a complete waste of celluloid it is by the star and her director. No one who remembers the "Merry Widow" can quite forgive Von sternberg his recent perpetrations, but "use doth breed a habit in a man" and the director has not been able to discard his former habits of originality and his finesse, even though sloppy work is now the mode for Hollywood. He knows very well how to make a good shot, how to make five extra and Marlene Dietrich Paddling about in a property pound look like six syivan nymphs; he can throw the property sordid glamour over Marline, the whore refusing a be in a flop-house because she intends to return to the respectability of the stage. Von Sternberg's fault is that he is old-fashioned; he believes that people still get a great thrill from seeing a mammoth locomotive roaring down the tracks; unlike any Freshman living in the Yard he does not know that in a skyscraper age the Sadie Thompsons have changed the Sadie Thompson costume for some thing resembling what even Die Dietrich herself wears in her more respectable moments.

As for Miss Dietrich, if one still has hopes that she may prove to be an actress, she is still hampered by the same old stereotyped parts in implausible plots. At any event, she is not just a simple German girl, she is a woman with considerable charm and magnificent stage presence. Under the husk of an artificial and assumed manner she may some day reveal something more than a pleasant pucker of the lips, a husky feminine bass voice, a pair of legs, and an engaging way of drawling "off-ten", "yesss?"

The second offering of the University Theater is an answer to the statement that writers cannot turn out two or three hundred scenarios for the movies each year and make them all worth while. "The Night of June 13" is a "Grand Hotel" of Suburbia; it contains nothing original, nothing very startling, no first class stars, and yet it is carried along by good acting and intelligent directing so that it is entertaining.