Anyone who would like to see the two Barrymore brothers, John and Lienel, eneering, smiling, and bowing to each other ever so slightly, but as graciously as only Barrymores can, should see "Arsene Lupin" now playing at Loew's State.

Here for the first time, the brothers in the same picture vie with each other in claiming the attention of the audience. At one moment Lionel may be seen nodding in a satisfied manner, laughing scornfully, and ordering like a master, while in the next is John, who speaks gently, jokes lightly, and compares himself with champagne, "the kind you can drink at any time, even before breakfast".

John, as the Duke of Charmerace, not seriously hampered by a heronie, is free to roam the boulevards of Paris at night in evening clothes, and although he is never actually seen committing his crimes, we are at once made to understand that this suave, pleasant gentleman is capable of typing up butlers, cracking safes, and calling out droves of police cars and motor cycles with the inevitable sirens.

Always suspecting him and on his heels is Lionel as Guerchard, police detective, who constantly surrounds large mansions in the dead of night with his cordons of gendarmes, stalks suspiciously about empty corridors adjacent to ballrooms, and in vain does his best to make the complacent yet devilishly clever Duke feel uncomfortable. From under Guerchard's very eyes necklaces and diamonds are whisked off a dozen ladies at a dance, and a whole great hall full of portraits of "ancestors bought cheap" and marble busts is robbed by a patrol of Arsene Lupin's police-clad confederates. The final insult to Guerchard occurs in the Louvre at a moment when it is surrounded by police. While Guerchard, twenty-five feet away, is standing in the very same room, the words "tut, tut", are scrawled across the front of a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and the real one, locked in a nearby room, is cut out of its frame and made away with.

Little phased by the usual complication of such a tale, however, the Barrymores seem equally at home in the huge hallways, the three-story Gothic arches, and the long expanses of stairways of the Gourney-Martin country house. The ease with which John, clad in a smoking jacket, pipe in mouth, opens massive oaken doorways and closes them noiselessly, tiptoes softly along the great corridors, and the grace and agility with which he slides down the huge, smooth stone bannisters are a pleasure to watch. One can almost smell the fragrance of his pipe as he leans over the rail to look downstairs. For Guerchard, naturally, the location is ideal, as nothing gives him greater pleasure than opening the entrance door with his own key, sitting in a dark niche all night guarding the family treasures, or thumbs in waistcoat, announcing in the great hall with his deep voice. "I will protect you. I am the police. I am France!"

Naturally the Barrymores dominate the picture, but they are ably assisted by Tully Marshall and Karen Morley, for whom, nevertheless, it is hard to share the Duke's enthusiasm. But leave the brothers alone together, face to face, let them return snarl for snarl, wit for wit, chuckle for chuckle, and any one may see that the two Barrymores are worthy of each other.