Runtime: 78 minutes
Directed by: Raoul Walsh
Starring: Joan Bennett, Charles Farrell, Ralph Bellamy, Eugene Pallette, Irving Pichel
From: Fox
An obscurity I am glad is currently on the Criterion Channel. It is part of a 9 film Joan Bennett collection currently on the platform; I'd seen some of them before but never this one. It's a Raoul Walsh picture based on a character present in stories written by Bret “The Hitman” Harte... actually, that wasn't his nickname. However, there really was a late 19th century writer known as Bret Harte; in middle school I read one of his short stories and as a pro wrestling fan that name has always made me chuckle.
The reason why Bennett is the titular Wild Girl: she has the temerity to be a tomboy in the Wild West. Her character is known as SALOMY JANE; no, I don't know what a “Salomy” is either. Anyhow, she has several suitors, who are on various levels of skeeviness. Even the guy she falls for (the “Meet Cute” happens while skinny-dipping, because it's Pre-Code)-a stranger to the area-wants to kill one of her suitors, because that SOB did something horrible to the stranger's family. The movie has several elements: melodrama, action, comedy, and romance.
It is a very entertaining 78 minutes (the last two minutes on the Criterion print is simply a musical coda done to a black screen) where because it's based on a book they decide to have frequent screen wipes appear to be pages of a book turning. The explanation for the introduction being the main characters speaking to the camera and stating a few sentences which reveal their characters & motivations... that is not as clear, although that was not a bad way to deliver an exposition dump. The story and characters are interesting so my attention never wavered but the true highlight was that much of the film was shot in Sequoia National Park in California. That's as in Giant Sequoia trees which provide a stunning landscape. I mean, the one town in the area even has giant trees right by storefronts.
That along with the unique touches this has perhaps has me rating this a bit higher than I should... yet I had fun seeing Bennett as Salomy Jane, Ralph Bellamy as the most ambiguous of the suitors, and character actor Eugene Pallette (Friar Tuck from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood) as the gregarious stagecoach driver Yuba Bill; he was certainly the most extravagant persona in the picture.
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