The Moviegoer

In the gay, mad, pre-war days life for St. Petersburg's upper crust was a wild melee of tempestuous music and passionate romance. From these Director Dreville has compounded "Kreutzer Sonata." As in Tolstoy's story the characters are carefree debauchees who tinkle champagne glasses to Beethoven's music. Thus Jean Yonnel, as Dimitri Pozdnycheff the irrestible rake, makes eyes at his creditor's wife while that gentleman removes the furniture, and reforms by going home to make love to the country lasses. American tabloid readers can fill in the rest of the plot: true love, questioned virtue, and a scheming horse-faced violinist.

Many of the little tricks of the French movies, photomontage and queer camera angles, have been abandoned by Hollywood. But there is something refreshing in a technique which plays romantic drama against a landscape of dreams and by emphasizing facial close-ups rather than sweeping panoramas, "Kreutzer Sonata" makes simplicity a virtue. March of Time's famous study of American Youth and a backstage view of the Paris Ballet complete the program.