Red Dust (1932). 83 minutes. Directed by Victor Fleming. Starring Clark Gable (as Dennis Carson), Jean Harlow (as Vantine Jefferson), Mary Astor (as Barbara Willis), Gene Raymond (as Gary Willis), Tully Marshall (as “Mac” McQuarg), Donald Crisp (as Guidon), Willie Fung (as Hoy), and Forrester Harvey (as Captain Limey).
Those in search of the quintessentially sultry Hollywood romance will not be disappointed by Red Dust, a sizzling pre-Code drama that focuses on a ménage à trois in Indochina, now known as Vietnam. There on a rubber tree plantation, red-hot Dennis Carson has his hands full with two women—Vantine, who is possibly a prostitute, and Barbara, the uptight wife of one of Dennis’s workers. The balmy Vietnamese backdrop against which Red Dust’s melodrama unfolds both mimics and fuels these characters’ romances. The action is over the top, with a fair amount of yelling, face slapping, and boozing, and the film’s sexy subtext is so charged that it seems to almost … Read the rest
