Runtime: 73 minutes
Directed by: William A. Wellman
Starring: Dorothy Mackaill, Donald Cook, Ralf Harolde, John Wray, Ivan F. Simpson
From: Warner Bros.
What a buckwild movie this is. This month, the Criterion Channel added a Pre-Code Divas section; I was intrigued. A few in the collection I had viewed before, but this was new to me… despite knowing of it for awhile. Even by Pre-Code standards, its frankness took me aback. It was also a gem from William A. Wellman, who was a quality director but I’d never seen anything like this from him.
Gilda is a young lady who because of awful circumstances must become a prostitute. She is assigned to a John who turns out to be an A-hole she knew previously. An accident happens so she skips town w/ her sailor beau, who just returned to town. This happens before the 10-minute mark hits. They travel to a fictitious Caribbean island of Tortuga and she has to chill there in a hotel until the scandal blows over. Regrettably for her, the men that reside in the hotel are unrepentant horndogs, real lecherous SOB’s who are excited that she is “the only white woman on the island” (an actual line of dialogue) and are upset that they “haven’t gotten to first base with her”-another line of dialogue, and I had no idea that term’s etymology went back that far. Even worse, the island’s jailer has also taken a shine to her.
Not only was this incredibly provocative, Safe in Hell was also rather harsh in tone. Yet this ride was endlessly enthralling for all its 73 minutes; a shame the Hays Code era was to begin in a few years. That prevented us from getting bold films filled w/ mature themes and decisions such as having two of the most honorable characters in that hellhole be Black: Clarence Muse as the hotel’s porter and Nina Mae McKinney as the hotel’s bartender. The performers were popular at the time so perhaps that was the reason why most of their dialogue wasn’t horribly stereotypical and they had dignity.
In another universe, Barbara Stanwyck or Lilian Bond could have played Gilda; Dorothy Mackaill is an actor unfamiliar to me; then again, many of her silent films are lost and almost all her sound movies are Pre-Code and are incredibly obscure. What a performance from her; the character had to go through a gamut of emotions and also had to be likable as she was forced to be a sex worker to survive and is a gal who decides to stay faithful to her boyfriend despite the maelstrom she stepped into of a phalanx of sweaty, lustful men pining for her. Fatalistic is a word I used in a recent review; it also applies here. There are enough fun moments where this was not 73 minutes of pure misery or a difficult sludge to get through.
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