Storm at Daybreak (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). What would have become of Hollywood without the War is appalling to imagine. When gangsters, showgirls, Broadway colyumists and the inmates of reformatories are momentarily exhausted, there is always the Archduke Ferdinand and the affair at Sarajevo. With this as a starting point, Storm at Daybreak relates the tragic romance of a man who falls in love with his best friend’s wife, played to the limit against an Austro-Serbian background and splendidly directed by Richard Boleslavsky.

The central situation in Storm at Daybreak is so commonplace that only skillful treatment can make it plausible if not affecting. By the time Geza (Nils Asther) goes to the front you are ready to believe in his feeling for Irina (Kay Francis), at whose country house his troops have been quartered. The day when her robust old husband Dushan (Walter Huston) finds out is also the day when Geza is in danger of being court-martialed by the officer in command of the town. Irina goes to warn him to escape. Dushan follows to create a scene. The commanding officer arrives last of all but Dushan has meanwhile made up his mind how to handle his situation. He persuades Captain Panto to accompany him in pursuit of the lovers, who are really in a room upstairs, drives the wagon over a cliff.

Undeniably Storm at Daybreak, from a play by Sandor Hunyadi, holds together well and the skill of its actors makes its gaudy situations credible. Boleslavsky’s version of the Sarajevo incident is probably Hollywood’s high to date — if only for the shot of a brass band saluting the Archduke’s arrival, with the cymbalist sadly exalted by the uproar of his own playing.

It’s Great to Be Alive (Fox) is a musicomedy with one sound farce idea. All the men in the world die of a disease called “masculitis.” Women hold the best jobs while a lady President heads the U. S. Government. Then a solitary male (Raul Roulien), thought to have died at the end of the second reel, reappears. He is captured by lady racketeers and held for auction, taken over by lady “Federal men” who plan to preserve him as government property. A world conference finally disposes of him.

Unfortunately, when this straightforward burlesque starts the film is half over. Earlier and duller footage develops a love affair between Roulien, an Argentinian with a heavy boulevard manner, and wistful Gloria Stuart. Best of the numerous songs he sings about her is called “I’ll Build a Nest.” Funniest shot: Edna May Oliver, head of the Academy of Medical Science, gravely superintending the manu facture of a synthetic man.

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