From the Pit

Hollywood, in its treatment of "our gallant Russian ally" as usual, comes with too little, too late. Evidently still punchy from the conviction that they are flying in the face of all convention by writing about Russia at all, they are content to abandon as irrelevant all considerations of artistic merit. They are introducing Russia to the American people; that's enough to justify "Mission to Moscow" and "The North Star." That Russia is no longer taboo in the drawing rooms, and that the more conservative journals discuss thte Red Army quite freely, seems to have escaped them.

"Mission to Moscow" a supremely unimaginative and literal rendering of the book, should have been relased a year sooner. As it is, we all knew that Russia was fighting the Germans and the wax-museum figures of "Mission to Moscow" lost any interest that they might ever have had. "The North Star" presents the Hollywood horse opera dressed in new costumes. It's still the story of peaceful, happy Red Gulch taken over by bad hombres, and the finish is pure Tom Mix. All this despite the fact that supposedly gutty and loftist Lillian Hollman wrote the script. The problem is simple. No matter what a picture is about, it must be good as a moving picture, and no tagging on of Russian names is going to help much.