It is generally reputed that a Frenchman's heart is four times the size of his brain, and this is probably why the French are able to produce a movie like "Generals Without Buttons," the current attraction at the Fine Arts. For it is hard to imagine Hollywood giving any attention to a story about a fend between two villages, one of which wanted rain for its cabbages, and the other of which wanted sun for its grape vines.

When this fend is carried to the younger generation, the fun really begins. These French youngsters make the Dead End Kids look like a bunch of sissies. They guzzle wine, swear colorfully, completely befuddle their naive schoolmaster, and stage a roaring battle with their bare buttocks billowing in the breeze a clever device to keep their enemies from licking the pants off them. Besides this, they're Latins even in their diapers, and they love magnificently. For a time it seems as if a watery romance between the schoolmarm of one town and the mayor of the other is going to spoil the whole war; but a big cloud comes over the horizon, and the wonderful battle royal starts all over again.

Perhaps it is the novelty alone which raises this picture high above the usual type of film which Americans have seen pour out of the sunny colony on the Pacific coast, for it has a delightful lightness and freshness which Hollywood seems rarely able to attain.