Red Dust (1932)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Expected more

Brilliant and touching

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

what a great movie. I just watched it on TCM. jean Harlow,and Clark gable were a stupendous combo. both of their character portrayals were right up their ally. both had a crusty edge to them. gene Raymond continued to be a actor I am impressed with every time I see him, in these older movies. he was also very good in a later movie Mr. &mrs. smith with Robert Montgomery,and Carole Lombard. he plays a great straight guy character,and very unassuming,almost naive. Mary Astor was great as the unfaithful wife, with more polish than the character Harlow played, but not as happy go lucky,and not street wise. Mary Astor was beautiful, and a great actor. she adapted well as the years advanced in Hollywood. her rolls were always perfect, with her advancement. she was a talented and very sophisticated lady in real life,and a accomplished author as well. her roll in Maltese falcon, and little women showed her diversity,as well as a movie that the title escapes me with Bette Davis, George Brent. I have enjoyed the tribute to Harlow.

A Product of its Time in Hollywood, this is a Stunning Star Pairing that was Indicative of a Clark Gable and Jean Harlow Personification of Their On Screen Personalities. Gable the Man's Man and Harlow the Free Spirited "inner woman" with the Libido on Full Display.The Film is Famous for its Pre-Code Sexuality Literally Dripping off the Screen. The Movie's Backdrop of the Jungle Drenched in Torrential Rain and Exuding Primal Instincts. The Banter is Double Talk and Sarcastic and Mary Astor's Naive Newly Wed Vulnerability is Laid Open for the Predatorial and Unrestrained Promiscuous Gable to take Advantage.This is Basic and Raw Stuff. The Pulp Fiction of Romance and Rough Housing among the Willing and before it was Taboo on Screen to Shine a Bedroom Light on such things. The Movie is Entertaining and it has been Pointed Out that it Contains much Racism. It does so with Uncomfortable Realism that just like the Sex was and is a part of Life that in an Historical Context, is better Explored than Expunged

It is problematic to identify with a reprehensible leading man, and that's the worthwhile opportunity this movie affords. Clark Gable plays an interesting character, an able and capable master of an unsupervised and inhospitable domain. I used to think Mr. Gable was a one-tone actor. He's far more multi-layered when teamed with Jean Harlow, and she's too smart and articulate for words. The three person dynamic of her always near Gable and Mary Astor is charming and even funnier since Gable takes it as a given. The sound recording technique still seems new in this movie so I miss some of the casually spoken dialog, but whenever I catch more of it, it is always a riot. The atmosphere is detailed and perfect. There is so much to see. The movie looks like it's leading toward tragedy; what a pleasure to arrive at a comedy payoff...Mary Astor is quite beautiful too, and in thinking back I suggest she's entitled to some sympathy and justification, since she succumbs to a man shifting his weight in an isolated position of a power. Anyway, let her and her husband (Gene Raymond) live the hypocrisies of civilized society... Bring those rubber trees to Fordlandia!

The setting is the tropics of Indochina, a rubber plantation to be specific. Dennis Carson (Clark Gable) is the owner of the rubber plantation, beset by the constant troubles - both human and natural - of running such a farm in a primitive place. Constantly surrounded by men, one day Dennis finds he has double trouble on his hands. First the prostitute Vantine (Jean Harlow) is foisted upon him because she is giving the law a wide berth due to her profession, and this looks like a nice secluded spot to lay low. Vantine actually falls for Dennis - she playfully calls him Fred - however, Dennis just thinks he is another john and that it's all in a day's work to Vantine.To add to his troubles, Dennis' new surveyor brings his wife, Barbara, along (Mary Astor), and the only place fit for a woman to live is in Dennis' home. Dennis sends the surveyor on a long stay in the jungle "to increase production", but he really just wants some alone time with Barbara, and Barbara returns the sentiment. Before her husband returns from the jungle Dennis and Barbara have fallen in love, but do they have the heart to tell her young husband? Watch and find out.There really is not much of a plot in this film other than to give a steamy lusty setting to a steamy lusty tale. This is a precode film, but if you analyze it frame by frame it is completely tame by today's standards. Even given the freedom of the precode era there were limits as to what could be shown, and thus almost everything is insinuated and it is up to the viewer to mentally project what happens. To me, this makes this film very erotic versus the biology lessons of today's films that show everything. Of course you do have some great visual cues, mainly Harlow's on-the-level prostitute bouncing about Dennis' home scantily clad and of course there's Harlow's famous bath in a rain barrel scene. Mary Astor's prim and proper Babs is a great contrast to Harlow's character as she gets swept up in events bigger than herself - her affair with Dennis - yet still seems to act like she thinks she's better than Vantine. Vantine's catty remarks, as she is hurt by Dennis' rejection of her, are classic Harlow all the way.This is one of my favorite precode films, and I heartily recommend it to anybody who enjoys films from the precode era.