Le fou des îles

Although it's seldom discussed, one of the staple genres that classic Hollywood tackled best was the jungle-set melodrama. It gave studio technicians an opportunity to experiment with oppressive artificial sets, eerie sounds effects and expressionist lighting. Those Venetian-blind shadow patterns so characteristic of film noir were preceded by just as many painterly images lit through louvered windows and bamboo curtains. And the exotic backgrounds allowed jaded screenwriters to attain a delirious level of moral turpitude, betrayal, sadistic violence and erotic obsessiveness, not to mention downright racism. White Woman may not quite rank with the finest wallows in the white man's grave (Red Dust, Tropic Zone, the absolutely jaw-dropping Kongo), but it certainly concocts a heady stew of cruelty, masochism and lasciviousness. This is thanks to a dense script by some old reliables, and by another ingenious portrayal by Laughton (much more subdued than in the similarly-set masterpieces, the Beachcomber and Island of Lost Souls, but wilier and more self-deluding.) Lombard was still stuck in her earnest, victimized stage before she hit her stride as a comedienne, but her brittle blonde presence and flustered pretensions are a fine fit here. Charles Bickford kicks the plot into overdrive as a Gable-like he-man who won't brook Laughton's guff. They're a perfect match for each other playing a doomed hand of poker while their gruesome fate awaits them at the hands of the natives they've crossed. Thankfully, the filmmakers avoid the moralising and let the viewer stoically sink into the morass along with them.

It's another steamy, lurid romp through the backlot jungle, this time in Malaysia, where poor Carole Lombard suffers from a one-two punch: Her husband committed suicide under suspect circumstances, and the local Brits despise her for working the only job she's allowed, singing sultry Gordon-Revel ballads in a mixed-race bar. (She's dubbed, I'm sure of it.) There she meets Charles Laughton, expertly playing years above his 34, a rubber plantation magnate who struts and revels in abusing his inferiors. Nevertheless she marries him, it's her only out, and journeys upriver to his sorry domain, which is where the Red Dust ripping off really begins. His overseer is Kent Taylor, and we know there's going to be a triangle, which expands into a quadrangle when new overseer Charles Bickford arrives, oozing testosterone and stirring up trouble. Wildly dated and decadent as it is, it's great pre-Code fun, with uprising, spears, native drums, decapitations, and Laughton looking like he's having a blast. Stuart Walker, a director of little note, ably keeps the pace brisk, and the atmosphere sweltering.

You're going to have to get past the title of this movie. Carole Lombard plays the title character. She's a singer in a Malaysian nightclub, and since at that time it was pretty scandalous for a white woman to hang around "natives", the other white people look down on her. Also, her first husband committed suicide, so Carole has quite a bit of stigma attached to her. Before she's "run out of town on a rail"-in the words of Lionel Barrymore in It's a Wonderful Life-wealthy plantation owner Charles Laughton proposes marriage.

If you're familiar with Jean Harlow's films, you'll enjoy White Woman ten-fold. After only reading the above paragraph, I'm sure you're picturing Jean's character from Reckless. Then, when Carole marries Charles and relocates to his rubber factory, you'll be reminded of Jean's film from 1932: Red Dust. White Woman is so obviously Paramount's answer to Jean Harlow and Red Dust, it's mind-boggling. I've seen Carole Lombard in her classic screwball comedies, and she's completely different in this romantic drama. She looks like Jean Harlow, she speaks like Jean Harlow, she holds her shoulders like Jean Harlow-it's as if director Stuart Walker told her, "We've got to take the attention away from MGM. Be Jean Harlow's clone." In her imitation of Jean, Carole's performance is excellent. She comes across as a beautiful, serious dramatic actress, which is not how her career is usually remembered.

Charles Laughton plays the cuckolded husband, and his Cockney persona is very entertaining to watch. In a way, he plays a very obsessive character, obsessed with cruel pranks. As Charles Bickford got third billing, I thought Carole would fall in love with him, but he's crude and coarse, and she prefers the gentle romance of Kent Taylor. Charles Bickford's blatantly sexual dialogue is very funny and shocking for the time period, so if you get a kick out of pre-Code nasty films, you'll want to watch this one. Also, there's quite a bit of violence in the story, which, had it been made one or two years later, wouldn't have been allowed. The violence is chilling and graphic, yet another reason to appreciate this uncensored old flick.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, since there's an upsetting scene involving an animal, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

It's probably worth mentioning that this jungle islands "farrago", as Simon Callow calls it in his biography of Laughton, is set in Malaya, not Africa. In those days it was still part of the British Empire, which accounts for Laughton's cockney accent. In addition, at the dinner party on Laughton's river-boat (about 20 minutes into the film), his new wife (Carole Lombard) says she'd like to learn Malay.

This was the last of the handful of films which Laughton made for Paramount during 1932-33 under a short-term contract (the others being Devil and the Deep, Sign of the Cross, If I Had a Million, and Island of Lost Souls). Callow thinks Laughton's acting is both original and preposterous: "giggling and teasing and play-acting, screwing up his eyes, scratching his head, pulling at his moustache and using a whole battery of tics."

It's certainly preposterous that the Carole Lombard character would ever have considered marrying such an unpleasant person as Laughton makes him, so this fatally weakens the story. On the other hand, she has little choice, having been ostracised by the British community who would like to see the back of her. The mysterious suicide of her husband has forced her to earn a living singing in shady bars, so Laughton's proposal of marriage, coupled with his claim that he owns a great deal of land up river, offers a way out of her predicament. It's only when she arrives at his house-boat that she realises what she's got herself into, and seeks solace with some other, rather more pleasant, male members of the cast.

Laughton's Horace Prin has never been considered in the same breath as his Henry VIII, Captain Bligh, or Quasimodo. Even so, it is still probably worth seeing, if only as an example of his early Hollywood work.

...from Paramount Pictures and director Stuart Walker. Carole Lombard stars as Judith Denning, a nightclub singer with a sordid past stuck in a Third World country where the white governors don't want her around. She reluctantly agrees to marry Horace Prin (Charles Laughton), a rich but repellent owner of a Malaysian rubber plantation. Known as the "King of the River" , Prin runs things with an iron fist and a maniacal twinkle in his eye. It doesn't take long for Judith to regret her decision, what with the horrid weather and seething natives. She's also being chased by a pair of her husband's employees: handsome Army deserter David (Kent Taylor) and swaggering new overseer Ballister (Charles Bickford).

This plays like a mash-up of A Lady to Love and Island of Lost Souls. The filmmakers re-used the sets from the latter film, and Laughton gets to ham it up in a delightful way, with an exaggerated accent, peculiar manners, and silly haircut and mustache. Lombard looks terrific, but she doesn't have much to do other than excite the guys in the cast while looking sad. Bickford doesn't show up until later in the movie, but he's worth it with his macho, no BS characterization clashing wonderfully with Laughton's sadistic weirdo. Like most exotic locale movies of the era, this one is more than a little racist, and the bungled depiction of the natives adds to the movie's bizarre "charm".