I might have passed on this film, but I happened to notice Clara Bow's name in the credits. I never saw any of her films before, and for starters, you might call this one a knockout. Bow's character is Biblically cursed by her grandfather's sexual indiscretion aboard a wagon train heading West during the pioneer days, and we're reminded a number of times that the 'sins of the father' will pass down to the third and fourth generation.
Pass down they do, as it doesn't take long for Nasa Springer (Bow) to earn the name 'Dynamite' when she heads to a finishing school in Chicago, her father's 'punishment' for an earlier scene in which she whips a rattlesnake and a half-breed Indian in short order. Those are actually the tamer elements in this pre-Code gem, in which we're startlingly reminded that subjects which might have been considered taboo in cinema were actually front and center as far back as the Thirties. Nasa revels in her naughtiness, revealing a nipple through a sheer blouse for example, or even more egregiously wrestling her large dog rather lasciviously on the floor of her parents' apartment. These scenes come and go so quickly that you sometimes don't catch the nuance immediately, but reflection on them after the film is over offers some incredible insight. Maybe a little cat-fight? - but of course!
Bow's character runs the gamut here, marrying, divorcing, having a baby, going the prostitution route to feed her child when she hits the skids, losing the baby in an apartment fire (!), and slumming with a new, wealthy boyfriend at a gay bar in a scene that's so over the top you won't know WHAT your reaction should be. If Nasa Springer needed a motto, it would be "Don't start anything you don't want finished". In response, she earns the name given her by Jay Randall (Anthony Jowitt) right after she destroys the senior Randall apartment in another, but this time off screen brawl with Sunny De Lane (Thelma Todd) - "You, savage"!
Let me remark as well on a few items no one else has mentioned here. You would probably have to go some to come up with an earlier example of commercial product placement in pictures. While trolling her New Orleans neighborhood for a potential paying customer, Nasa passes a store front window with ads for Bromo Seltzer and Dr. Scholl's Zino-Pads. They might have simply been in camera range inadvertently, but who knows?
And if Cagney hadn't done it to Harlow a year earlier in "The Public Enemy", this might have been the first time a guy in pictures (Monroe Owsley as Larry Crosby) manhandles his girlfriend/wife by shoving her in the face. Cagney used a grapefruit, but at least his girl didn't fall down over a chair the way Bow hit the deck in this one. And speaking of Owsley's Crosby, did anyone else get a chuckle out of his uncanny resemblance to Pee Wee Herman? In hindsight, that made some of the scenes in which he appeared even more comical.
Well I guess there are a lot of reasons to see this flick, trying as I have to enumerate a few. If you're a cinema fan, this is probably one of those you'd classify as a must see, and if truth be told, probably for all the wrong reasons.
Pass down they do, as it doesn't take long for Nasa Springer (Bow) to earn the name 'Dynamite' when she heads to a finishing school in Chicago, her father's 'punishment' for an earlier scene in which she whips a rattlesnake and a half-breed Indian in short order. Those are actually the tamer elements in this pre-Code gem, in which we're startlingly reminded that subjects which might have been considered taboo in cinema were actually front and center as far back as the Thirties. Nasa revels in her naughtiness, revealing a nipple through a sheer blouse for example, or even more egregiously wrestling her large dog rather lasciviously on the floor of her parents' apartment. These scenes come and go so quickly that you sometimes don't catch the nuance immediately, but reflection on them after the film is over offers some incredible insight. Maybe a little cat-fight? - but of course!
Bow's character runs the gamut here, marrying, divorcing, having a baby, going the prostitution route to feed her child when she hits the skids, losing the baby in an apartment fire (!), and slumming with a new, wealthy boyfriend at a gay bar in a scene that's so over the top you won't know WHAT your reaction should be. If Nasa Springer needed a motto, it would be "Don't start anything you don't want finished". In response, she earns the name given her by Jay Randall (Anthony Jowitt) right after she destroys the senior Randall apartment in another, but this time off screen brawl with Sunny De Lane (Thelma Todd) - "You, savage"!
Let me remark as well on a few items no one else has mentioned here. You would probably have to go some to come up with an earlier example of commercial product placement in pictures. While trolling her New Orleans neighborhood for a potential paying customer, Nasa passes a store front window with ads for Bromo Seltzer and Dr. Scholl's Zino-Pads. They might have simply been in camera range inadvertently, but who knows?
And if Cagney hadn't done it to Harlow a year earlier in "The Public Enemy", this might have been the first time a guy in pictures (Monroe Owsley as Larry Crosby) manhandles his girlfriend/wife by shoving her in the face. Cagney used a grapefruit, but at least his girl didn't fall down over a chair the way Bow hit the deck in this one. And speaking of Owsley's Crosby, did anyone else get a chuckle out of his uncanny resemblance to Pee Wee Herman? In hindsight, that made some of the scenes in which he appeared even more comical.
Well I guess there are a lot of reasons to see this flick, trying as I have to enumerate a few. If you're a cinema fan, this is probably one of those you'd classify as a must see, and if truth be told, probably for all the wrong reasons.