Red Headed Woman

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Alec B Top notch salacious melodrama, mostly due to the great script and Jean Harlow. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 09/14/24 Full Review Audience Member Sexy, racy, bristling with snappy dialouge and funny it is loaded with entertainment. The film was banned in the UK and Harlow basically spends the entire movie bouncing around from affair to affair. It was essentially an original gold digger/black widow film that paved the way for many others throughout history. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review david f A great soap opera which pushed the boundaries of film before the Production Code began to set them. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Red-Headed Woman really epitomizes pre-Code Hollywood. Jean Harlow plays a gold-digger who seduces her boss (Chester Morris) and who will stop at nothing to break up his marriage and climb her way to the top. He tries to resist, but she makes it clear that she's available anytime and anywhere ("I'll be just what you want me to be"), and that no one will need to know. After getting her face slapped when he tries to break it off, she snaps "Do it again, I like it, do it again!"; it's a scene that is both disturbing and erotic, as she later very provocatively hides a key down her blouse as he glowers from the door, trapped, and then advances on her as the shot fades to black. You may wonder why I like this movie despite the physical abuse Harlow suffers, when I hated other movies from this time period which show a woman getting slapped. In this case it's shown as the darker side of both characters. Harlow will submit herself to anything in her desperation. Morris is hopelessly trapped between his conscience and his libido, and as his emotions boil over, gets violent. Their relationship is a sickness, and this is not sugarcoated or made to appear rosy or normal by the film. Harlow was 21 at the time and is fantastic - sexy, sure, but also great as drunk and great as angry. As the film goes on her character gets increasingly repugnant, as she moves from man to man, and in a surprise, begins an affair with the chauffer as well. She is frustrated and humiliated when found out, but in what was a shocking ending only possible pre-Code, she's shown to be continuing on with some other rich old guy in Paris, unpunished (gasp). The movie has elements of unguarded honesty - the seduction, the dilemma and overwhelming temptation Morris's character faces, and the freedom to express this ending - but also moments that are just over-the-top male sex fantasy, bordering on misogyny. Harlow was an emerging sex symbol and aside from showing off her body, has lines from the beginning that make it clear she's a 'bad girl' - for example, after asking 'Can you see through this' about a dress and being told yes, saying she'll wear it. It's a pretty simple story and far from profound, but it moves right along in its 79 minutes, was fun to watch, and reminds us of some truths between men and women that are eternal. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member This is the prototypical Jean Harlow character, done to the hilt by a very skilled performer who, in the final analysis, probably has more in common with Mae West than with Marilyn Monroe...Amorality has never been so much fun...--Jean Harlow Triumphs In Salacious Tale... One Brazen Babe...!! Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member The problem with Jean Harlow's character isn't that she's slutty and a possibly a nymphomaniac, but that's she's batshit insane on top of that (and also just a bad person). Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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