Sangue Vermelho

In the Golden Age of Hollywood, amid the storied eons of the great glamor stars, you had the Stanwyckian tough cookies, the Rogers-like high society sophisticates, and the Garboish fragile beauties - but no one was quite like the Jazz Age wild child Clara Bow. When she made an entrance, she burst onto the screen like a whirlwind and didn't look back, positively exuding earthy vitality. That she didn't have a significant sound career is truly unfortunate, for one's imagination plays happily with the notion of Clara bawdily defying the frigid censors well into the culturally stolid war years. Though we didn't get much in that way, CALL HER SAVAGE is fortunately a picture worth a thousand words.

Okay, the first ten minutes make it look like a dusty old western, but STAY WITH IT...otherwise you'll be missing one of the boldest and brightest pre-Code items this side of CONVENTION CITY. When Clara first appears on horseback, the wind blowing through her hair, you will be transfixed for the remainder of the show. The narrative opens in Texas, with a rich landowner punishing his tomboy daughter Nasa (Clara) by sending her off to Chicago for charm school. He also has latent motivation in wanting to marry her off to the man of his choice. Once in the big city, Nasa becomes known as "Dynamite" in the tabloids for her volatility and elopes with a slippery charmer instead of her intended beau. He strays, so to speak, as soon as their honeymoon, leading Clara to take her leave. From here, it's a road to ruin and back again for the young lady, with a startling secret in store for her at the climax. A free-form blend of western, romantic comedy, tragedy, and everything in between, CALL HER SAVAGE takes (sometimes jarring) turns from comedy to pathos, creating an absolutely unique experience.

I can only imagine how Joseph Breen and his ilk must have gnashed their teeth over this film - virtually every scene seems to have been calculated to drive them up the wall. For all its brazenness, it's surprising that CALL HER SAVAGE was a Fox production, for one would expect it more from Warner Bros. We first see Clara in a tight-fitting white shirt, enthusiastically whipping a snake - then a handsome ranch hand when he laughs at her! Clara then tears off a portion of her shirt to tend to his wounds (my, hasn't that one been appropriated time and time again!). Further mix in race relations, prostitution, and an attempted rape of Nasa by her STD-ravaged husband ("Don't get up" she cautions. "I GET UP every afternoon!" he answers). And don't miss the detour to cinema's very first gay bar where the waiters sing about sailors in pajamas (!). On a seedier level, there's a brief but unsavory taste of pederasty when a drunken old fool approaches a little girl.

But it's Clara who makes this movie. The early scenes of her scantily clad and writhing on the grass have a palpable erotic charge that no black and white vintage can dilute (remember, this was the woman who sat through a stage performance of Dracula dressed in a fur coat - and little else). I really hope that Clara is well remembered today, for she was TRULY a star and incredible personality. A lively, vital, and eternally beautiful free spirit. But there was always a touch of sadness in those big, childlike eyes, wasn't there...

On the face of it, 'Call Her Savage' has all the element needed for a smash hit and a pre-code classic. It is sexy, shows things designed to shock audiences (such as a drag act in a bar) and does not shrink from addressing issues such as prostitution. More importantly, it is also well-acted throughout, with Clara Bow deserving special praise. She displays a range of emotions rarely seen in one actress in one and the same film, and she does so absolutely convincingly: from boisterous fun to despair, it is all there. Still, the film is today almost forgotten: 29 user reviews on this site and on the date I am writing mine is not a lot. Why? I believe there are two reasons. First, the plot is pretty episodic and jumps from one setting to the next - from the ranch in Texas to Chicago, to New York, New Orleans etc. Etc. The episodes are linked by the character played by Bow and by a few minor figures who appear in several of them, but they are so disparate that the audience has no chance to get into the mood of the film, so to say. A secondary issue that is jarring at least for modern audiences is the blatantly racist message of 'Call Her Savage'. Bow's character literally is a 'savage'; her lack of self control and bouts of violence are explained with her Indian ancestry (rather than for example with her father having neglected her). She is a half-blood. The film thus denounces indigeneous Americans as unfit for civilised society, and what is worse, unfit not for cultural but for biological reasons. Hard to stomach. I am rating 'Call Her Savage' seven stars in recognition mainly of Bow's performance.

Clara Bow gives one of the greatest performances of any actress of the early 1930s. She's a million miles away from the iconic flapper of the 20s which made her famous. In this masterpiece, she brings to life a role you'd expect to find someone like Barbara Stanwyck playing - astonishingly, Clara Bow is easily as good.

If Clara Bow conjures up the image of a good time girl, a saucy sexpot, Betty Boop or the epitome of The Jazz Age, then like me you will be blown away by this. Just how good an actress she is, is a complete revelation of Road to Damascus proportions. Sadly dealing with her own troubled life was more important to her than acting so despite some very lucrative offers from the big studios, she retired from acting shortly after making this. It was a sad loss to the industry because on the basis of this, you can imagine that if she'd carried on, she'd be remembered as someone like Bette Davis, Greta Garbo etc

As Hitchcock said, you can't make a good film unless you've got a good story and this is certainly a good story. It's heavily imbued with moral righteousness but it's thoroughly engrossing. In reality it's probably unlikely that so much bad fortune could befall one person but the brilliant way this is made makes this most melodramatic of all melodramas utterly believable.

Director John Francis Dillon is virtually unknown not just now but even back then. Unfortunately for cinema, he died young so never became famous which, from the evidence here, he was destined to be. This obviously big budget production isn't just magnificently directed, it's beautifully and imaginatively photographed as well. The guy behind the camera was one of the superstar cinematographers of the 30s, Lee Garmes so you know you're going to see something excellent if it's associated with him.

Perhaps what makes this story so relatable to a modern audience is that Clara Bow's character Nasa, seems so normal to us now. OK, she's got an uncontrollable temper but she's very much like any normal girl you'd find anywhere today. Her sense of independence, her crazy notion that a woman is not simply a possession of a man and that a woman can make her own decisions seemed outrageous in 1932: that was not just a different time but a whole different world.

This is a tale of tragedy with a very old fashioned message - that the sad life of the protagonist Nasa Springer (Clara Bow) is part God's vengeance for the sins of the fathers, and part the result of her heritage, because Nasa is half Indian and thus has a savage nature. Cue eye rolls.

The film opens on a 19th century wagon train with the head of the wagon train, Silas Jennings, openly cheating on his wife and also getting violent with anybody who calls him on it. One man says that the Indian attack that the wagon train suffers and the resulting dead are God's judgment and talks about the sins of the father passing on to Silas' further generations. Next the film is in Texas, eighteen years later, and Silas' daughter Ruth has married her childhood sweetheart Pete. But Pete has no time for romance since he wants to get rich quite badly. Sad and neglected Ruth strikes up a friendship with a well educated and handsome Indian, Ronasa, and the two have an implied affair. The fruit of that affair is Nasa. (Didn't Pete think it strange that his wife basically named her after Ronasa? But I digress.)

So about 18 years later we meet grown Nasa (Clara Bow), fiery in both hair color and disposition. She gets into physical altercations, gets sent to a finishing school by her disapproving "dad" and manages to finish off a few of her classmates in fights in the process, rejects dad's choice for her marriage and weds a wastrel, and things just go downhill from there. At times she has money, at other times she doesn't, but she just can't stop being a wildcat.

The end is bittersweet, and the implication is that Bow will end up with "Moonglow" (Gilbert Roland) because the two are racially alike, NOT because all through the years, and the ups and downs, and through Nasa's bad treatment of him at times, this guy is the sweetest nicest person you could ever meet, has always been there for her, and is not bad on the eyeballs either.

Bow's acting is wonderful in this. Fox, at a time when it seemingly could do very little right (1930-1935), managed to make a true classic here, and a true precode, and they managed to do what Paramount never really could do - give Bow a really meaty talking picture role. Bow's outfits take great advantage of her figure, with bold shots of her cleavage and everything else she has above the waist There is plenty of infidelity and the resulting VD that occurs in one case, an attempted rape, prostitution, and a tragic fire. . And all of this from a studio that, at the time, was known for its homespun entertainment for rural folk. Gilbert Roland has a pretty small role, but he is absolutely charming. Thelma Todd is true to her nickname of "Hot Toddy" and almost unrecognizable with that short haircut, vying with Bow for the same men and matching Bow's character insult for insult and hair pull for hair pull when the two get into some very public altercations.

I'd strongly recommend this. It is great precode entertainment even with some of the maudlin melodrama and the muddled message.

It is sad that the demons in Clara Bow's life curtailed a career in talking motion pictures that would have seemed promising. She positively sizzles in Call Her Savage.

The film has Clara cast as one wild child Texas heiress, granddaughter of Willard Robertson and daughter of Estelle Taylor. Robertson has his hands filled with her and finally sends her off to school in Chicago.

After that the post flapper era men just flock to her. But Clara sets her sights on dissolute playboy Monroe Owsley, taking him away from Thelma Todd. Owsley is brutally frank about his male privilege telling Todd in no uncertain terms as he's allowed to stray because after all he pays the bills. The chick fight that Bow and Todd engage is one for the books, much better than Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel in Destry Rides Again.

Clara's ride goes up and down from the wild child to the degradation of prostitution to back up on top again. Through it all the reason for her wildness is given in the explanation of her heritage. Her one true friend in the end is grandfather's faithful ranch hand Gilbert Roland and what they have in common.

I agree with another reviewer that the film is both sexist and racist and glories in it. It's also brutally frank and no wonder Joseph Breen and his crowd got such fits over films like Call Her Savage.

A great before the Code film and a sad reminder in what we lost when Clara Bow couldn't make more films like this.