The Crimson Moviegoer

The Fine Arts will be offering at least till Wednesday a Swiss psychological study in German called "The Eternal Mask." Your German A knowledge of German won't do you any good, but neither will your ignorance of the language do you any harm. For the striking effects of the picture are all pictorial, and superimposed English titles keep you sufficietly posted as to what's being said.

"Eternal Mask" is a study of insanity, and although it would seem to an ignorant spectator that the psychology might be questioned, the drama of the thing is tremendously absorbing. The core of the film is a series of imaginary scenes depicting the wanderings of a man within his own mind. A young doctor is refused permission by his superior to try out a serum he has developed on a hopeless meningitis patient, although the young man is convinced that it is infallibly salutary. So he goes ahead and tries it anyway, and the man dies. Death was the result of an embolism, and the serum had nothing to do with it, but the young doctor doesn't know that. When the dead man's widow accuses him of murder, and all the newspapers more or loss take up her ery, he is made acutely conscious of the burden of his responsibility.

After an intermediate stage of carousing and brooding, he is suddenly convinced that he must find Dr. Dumartin, who is himself. His mental adventures in a gloomy, light-flecked, underground labyrinth, where he is searching for himself, comprise the distinctive part of the picture