The Red Kimono

Dorothy Davenport Reid (1895-1977) was one of the most important women producer/directors during the 1920s. She came from a distinguished theatrical family. Her father Harry Davenport is best remembered as Dr. Meade in GONE WITH THE WIND. She was married to early matinee idol Wallace Reid hence her being known as Mrs Wallace Reid. When he died in 1923 of complications from drug addiction, she became an advocate for social causes. Her hard hitting film about drug addiction HUMAN WRECKAGE (1923) with Bessie Love and her next film BROKEN LAWS no longer survive but THE RED KIMON0, a film about prostitution made in 1925, does.

While the real life story of New Orleans prostitute Gabrielle Darley who murders her pimp/lover is melodramatized for the screen, it remains surprisingly effective thanks to the lead performance of Priscilla Bonner (IT, THE STRONG MAN). There are also small parts for silent film regulars Tyrone Power Sr, Virginia Pearson, and George Siegmann. The direction is credited solely to Walter Lang who would become an in-house workhorse at 20th Century Fox for many years but the film was co-directed by Reid. Why she chose to leave her name off is curious. Perhaps as producer and with her appearance as herself, she felt it would be a case of overkill. Who can say. By the early 1930s with the advent of sound and the studio system firmly in place her career was over although she lived another 40+ years.

Today like so many of the women film pioneers she is forgotten but hopefully the release of this film on DVD along with the two others in the FIRST LADIES: EARLY WOMEN FILMMAKERS series from Kino will help to correct that. While not a great film, THE RED KIMONO is an important one and still plays well today. The social criticism of judgmental attitudes and misplaced philanthropy is still relevant to our time. The print from the Library Of Congress looks great and the hand tinted red sequences for certain scenes have been beautifully restored. Robert Israel's piano score is also a plus. The title comes from the article of clothing worn by Gabrielle as a prostitute...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

A melodramatic story based on a real woman, whose (oops) identity wasn't changed nor her approval sought, resulting in a lawsuit afterwards. Nonetheless it's pretty cool that this was written, directed, and produced by women (Dorothy Davenport for the latter two), and I liked the visual effect with the red overlays on clothing and streetlights, and orange in a brief scene showing WWI.

The film supports "fallen" women in the sense that it says they're a victim of circumstance, are sympathetic characters, and can be redeemed, which I believe are the reasons the film was banned in some places (kind of surprising when you watch it now). At the same time, it also implies they're tainted, need a white knight figure to make them honest, and need to work hard to be worthy of happiness, all of which seems dated now. Overall though, there is empathy, and out of several Biblical allusions, it picks a good one in "he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

The pace of the film is on the slow side as it plays itself out, told partially in a flashback, so I don't think it's one I could truly love. On the other hand, it has a pretty good performance from Priscilla Bonner, and various street scenes and carnival rides, and while those seem to appear rather often in films from this era, they always work for me. It's decent enough to take a look.

"The Red Kimona" is a social commentary film that in some ways is very, very, very old fashioned and hokey. Interestingly, on the other hand, it also manages to be very modern in its sensibilities as well! This odd combination of the old and new make for a film that is interesting to watch but not exactly a must-see as far as silent films are concerned.

The film is a piece of social commentary. The subject of the film is a young woman who comes from a horrible home. Her mother and father are wretched jerks and she's longing for love. When she meets a man who says he loves her and wants to marry her, she's thrilled--not knowing that he has no such intentions. Instead, he forces himself on her and then keeps her as a virtual slave. She eventually escapes and later kills him when she discovers he's about to do this same thing to another woman. All this happens early in the film and most of the plot actually involves her life after these tragedies--and how society often fails women like this--treating them like lepers instead of victims. In fact, it's rather frank discussion of this is quite shocking for the times and must have raised a few eyebrows! The movie is interesting due to its social advocacy as well as the sensationalistic actions. However, despite this, the movie also is very preachy (with lots of Biblical references that seem a bit out of place and heavy-handed) and very conventional--like a 19th century play. As a result, it's interesting more as a curio than for its dramatic structure.

Overall verdict--it's worth seeing if you are a fan of silents, but otherwise it's skippable. Not bad, but not great.

Walter Lang directs this gripping if somewhat contrived saga adapted by Dorothy Arzner from a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns about fallen woman Gabrielle Darley (Priscilla Bonner). The first moments are bizarre, as we see Mrs. Wallace Reid (nee Dorothy Davenport), the film's producer, turning the pages of a bound collection of archival newspapers from 1917; she pauses at a story about Darley. She then turns to the camera and "talks" to the audience. This being a silent film, of course, we hear nothing but see her spoken words as text. I have never seen this device in a silent film before.

We then enter the Darley saga at mid-point in the red light district of New Orleans as the heroine learns from a fellow prostitute that the man who lured her into sin (Carl Miller) has deserted her to go to Los Angeles to get married. After some embarrassingly awkward histrionics by Bonner, whose emoting improves remarkably as the story progresses, we see her in the streets of L.A. and bingo, she just happens to run into Miller at a jeweler's shop as he is about to buy a wedding ring for the other woman! (Perhaps continuity scenes were filmed but cut here.) She confronts him, he shrugs her off as if her sudden appearance from hundreds of miles away is minor and unsurprising annoyance, she shoots him on the spot, sinks to her knees in penitent prayer and is promptly arrested and sent to jail.

Her case becomes a cause celebre, attracting hordes of curious sensation seekers, among whom is a then-common social-uplift type (Virginia Pearson) which was also satirized in Griffith's "Intolerance," who takes Darley in as a sort of trophy to show her trendy friends. And we are gradually drawn into the plight of this character by good acting, excellent photography (despite a few lapses into proscenium arch-ism), vivid characters as we root for Darley whose efforts to redeem herself seem to be crushed at every turn due to societal disapproval of her sordid past. Overall, the fashions and hairdos are very 1925 despite the fact that the whole story wraps up by 1917. In the beautifully preserved print I saw there is an appropriate and unobtrusive score by the prolific Robert Israel. The title derives from a hand- tinted garment owned by Darley which plays no important role in the story and seems to be a crude attempt at symbolism.

I just saw this film as part of TCM's Women Pioneers in Film series. I have heard a lot about Dorothy Davenport Reid's moral crusade, and was expecting a dry and preachy kind of film. However, the film hardly ever bogs down into preachiness and has enough dramatic momentum to move things along at a good clip. Priscilla Bonner, whom I had only seen in "It", does an excellent job as Gabrielle--we feel sympathy for her plight but she never bogs down in pathos.