Jean Harlow plays a gold digger determined not to get stuck on the wrong side of the tracks and goes through men like tissues in an attempt to land a sugar daddy in "Red-Headed Woman."
I've long since accepted that to watch a Jean Harlow movie you just simply have to agree to disagree with seemingly every moviegoer from the 1930s about Harlow's appeal. She was hot stuff back then, a fact that is nearly inexplicable to me now. In a role like this, when she's basically a slut, I can accept that men would want to have sex with her, despite the fact that she's actually quite ugly and uber-annoying to boot (ugh, that baby talk!) But that every man who comes across her would also want to dump his wife to marry her? That is pretty much impossible for me to get my head around.
Though I will say that Harlow looks much more attractive with red hair than she does with that awful platinum blonde thing she sports in most of her movies. And while I don't find her remotely attractive, there is something about her that commands the screen.
"Red-Headed Woman" is not the raciest pre-Code movie I've seen, but it does manage to give a newbie some indication of how pre-Code movies were different from the ones that would be released in the couple of decades following. A movie made even five years later would never dream of letting Harlow's character get what she wants in the end without atoning for her sins first.
Grade: B+
I've long since accepted that to watch a Jean Harlow movie you just simply have to agree to disagree with seemingly every moviegoer from the 1930s about Harlow's appeal. She was hot stuff back then, a fact that is nearly inexplicable to me now. In a role like this, when she's basically a slut, I can accept that men would want to have sex with her, despite the fact that she's actually quite ugly and uber-annoying to boot (ugh, that baby talk!) But that every man who comes across her would also want to dump his wife to marry her? That is pretty much impossible for me to get my head around.
Though I will say that Harlow looks much more attractive with red hair than she does with that awful platinum blonde thing she sports in most of her movies. And while I don't find her remotely attractive, there is something about her that commands the screen.
"Red-Headed Woman" is not the raciest pre-Code movie I've seen, but it does manage to give a newbie some indication of how pre-Code movies were different from the ones that would be released in the couple of decades following. A movie made even five years later would never dream of letting Harlow's character get what she wants in the end without atoning for her sins first.
Grade: B+