Red Dust [VHS] [1932]

Buy Red Dust [VHS] [1932]: Victor Fleming|Clark Gable|Jean Harlow|Gene Raymond,

Buy Red Dust [VHS] [1932] Now

MGM Entertainment

Release date: Monday 7th of February 1994

Starring: Victor Fleming|Clark Gable|Jean Harlow|Gene Raymond, £10.99
Jean Harlow and Clark Gable in a pre-Code love story
Review date: 2003-03-08 Rating: 8 out of 10

The 1932 film "Red Dust," the first cinematic pairing of platinum blonde Jean Harlow and the virile Clark Gable, is obviously inspired by the success of Somerset Maugham's "Rain." Once again we have a fallen woman, Vantine Jefferson (Harlow), a Saigon prostitute, running from the police who hides out on an Indo-China rubber plantation run by an unshaven Dennis Carson (Gable). Harlow's character talks tough, but she is a sizzling sexpot (this is the film where she takes a bath in a rain barrel). Gable had achieved stardom by slapping around Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul," and he gives Harlow's character the same sort of treatment. She sasses him back while vamping like crazy. Soon he falls for her and tries to get her to accept money so she can start her life anew.

The next boat arrives at the plantation and delivers engineer Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) and his wife, Barbara (Mary Astor). Willis has been stricken with fever and while he recovers Carson forgets about Vantine and falls for Barbara. Then things start getting really complicated. But the main attraction here is these characters wallowing in sins of the flesh in a film made two years before the Code cleaned up Hollywood (and five years before Harlow's death at the age of 26). You will never think about your favorite cheese again after watching Harlow and Gable tackle the subject. Gable acts the part of a first-rate cad for most of the film while Harlow drips innuendo in comments like" "Don't mind me, boys. I'm just restless...Guess I'm not used to sleeping nights anyway." Even Astor as the adulterous "Babs" has her moments, as when she and Gable share their first kiss after he rescues her from a monsoon that leaves her drenched.

Obvious you are not going to find any nudity in this black and white pre-Code film, but even so "Red Dust" is still sexier than the vast majority of contemporary films. The film was directed by Victor Fleming (uncredited) and is based on a play by Wilson Collison. This was the first of two films that Gable made with Fleming before the director was called in to save the actor from George Cukor on "Gone With the Wind." Harlow and Gable would be united again the following year in "Hold Your Man," in 1935 in "China Seas," 1936's "Wife Versus Secretary," and in her last film, 1937's "Saratoga."

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