Red Dust

Dennis runs a rubber plantation in Indochina, worn down by heat and isolation. Vantine turns up having fled trouble in town, stays a while, and something starts between them. Then a new engineer arrives with his wife, and Dennis's attention shifts to the married woman. The film was made before the Hays code was enforced with any seriousness, and it shows in every scene. The passage of Jean Harlow bathing in a rain barrel could not have been shot a few years later. The dialogue is equally direct, with nobody hiding behind marriage or morality. Harlow is the engine. Her sparring with Clark Gable has far more life in it than anything involving the composed woman Mary Astor plays. Gable remade the same story in 1953 as Mogambo, relocated to Africa. Its flaw is the colonial gaze. The local workers exist as background material and the film never questions it for a second. Who it is for: anyone curious about pre-Code Hollywood. Who it is not for: viewers who will be troubled by how the period is depicted.