WILD GIRL B+
USA (78 mi) 1932
d: Raoul Walsh
This is actually a remake of several earlier Silent film
versions, all based on the 1898 Bret Harte novella Salomy Jane’s Kiss, from William Nigh and Lucius Henderson’s SALOMY
JANE (1914) starring Beatriz Michelena, and George Melford’s SALOMY JANE (1923)
starring Jacquelyn Logan, to this early 1932 Pre-Code Raoul Walsh version
starring Joan Bennett, where all three versions are adapted from Paul
Armstrong’s 1907 four-act stage version called Salomy Jane. Set out West
after the Civil War during the mid 19th century, it takes place entirely in the
redwood forests of California’s Sequoia National Park, a supremely beautiful location
that only adds a unique element to this film.
Walsh grew up in New York City as childhood friends with John Barrymore,
becoming an actor for the stage and screen before being hired by D.W. Griffith,
working as his assistant director while also playing John Wilkes Booth in
Griffith’s racially controversial but also highly influential epic film THE
BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), the first film to ever be shown in the White House
under Woodrow Wilson. Walsh lost an eye
in a car accident while making the film IN OLD ARIZONA (1928), where actor
Warner Baxter went on to win the Best Supporting actor in the part Walsh
intended to play, effectively ending Walsh’s acting career, but he wore an eye
patch for the rest of his life while still directing well over 100
feature-length films. Walsh discovered Marion
Morrison, an unknown prop boy at the time working on THE BIG TRAIL (1930), turning
him into the star of his film while also changing his name to John Wayne, after
Revolutionary War General Mad
Anthony Wayne, who happened to be the subject of a book the director was
reading. Walsh became known as one of
the most competent craftsmen during the heyday of the studio system, specializing
in adventure stories, a director who knew how to utilize outdoor locations and
drive the action through pace, composition, and editing sequences, becoming a
classical Hollywood filmmaker.
This early talking film shows how effortlessly Walsh made
the transition from Silent to talking pictures, using the opening credit
sequence with photograph album photos introducing the cast, but the characters
come to life on camera humorously introducing some little tidbit about their
character, “I'm Salomy Jane, and I like trees better than men, because trees
are straight,” a clever and charmingly amusing aural and visual cue that not
only introduces sound, but enhances the audience’s appreciation for the cast
even before the movie begins. Another
clever device is an optical page-turning effect, where each transitional dissolve
into the next scene is a rarely used technique reinforcing the storybook aspect
of the movie. And the opening of this
film is a true delight, somewhat dated with a black Mammy character, but
there’s never the least inference of bias or mistreatment, as she becomes the
mother figure, best friend, and playmate of Salomy Jane, Joan Bennett as a
feisty young frontier woman who is something of a tomboy in perfect harmony
with the natural world around her, at home among the trees, the creatures in
the woods, and playing with little children.
When she sees the stagecoach arriving, she waves to the driver before
running home through the woods, grabbing Louise Beavers as Mammy, where the two
have to fend off a half a dozen or more live bears en route, which is a
dazzlingly filmed sequence as they are all in the same frame together, no
computer graphics, making this a most impressive opening. Eugene Pallette as stagecoach driver Yuba Bill
is another revelation, as he’s a hearty old soul who loves to tell stories,
something of a Shakespearean Falstaff character with his rotund girth, his gift
for gab, his embellishments of stories making him the true hero, and of course,
his ultimate cowardliness. Again, when
making the transition to talking pictures, it helps to have such a natural born
raconteur and scene stealer who is as thoroughly entertaining as Pallette, who
eventually became too physically large for screen roles, building a secondary
career just doing voice effects. His
best scene here is when he describes a conversation between horses, using
hysterical voice inflections to describe the different animal’s sound as well
as their intentions. If that’s not
inventive enough, Bennett, alone in her element, even goes skinny-dipping in
the river showing her bare backside where of course she’s discovered by someone
she knows only as Man, continually calling him that until the final frame of
the film, turning out to be Billy, aka the Stranger (Charles Farrell), who in
the opening credit sequence indicates he fought with Robert E. Lee.
A stranger in the midst is enough to arouse people’s
suspicions, as it matches the unusual occurrence of the stage getting robbed,
so the sheriff rounds up a group of men folk to hang by a tree whoever the
culprit is before the night is done.
That’s quick and efficient justice in this outland Western
frontier. And if that’s not enough
trouble, Jane is constantly pursued by an assemblage of men competing for her
affections, including card shark Jack Marbury (Ralph Bellamy), the man in black
always seen curling his waxed moustache, or a contemptible swine Rufe Waters
(Irving Pichel) who believes he has an early claim on her, or an overly pious
man running for Mayor who secretly molests women, Phineas Baldwin (Morgan
Wallace), none of whom really catch her interest. But when she hears the handsome Stranger
tracked down Baldwin and shoots him on the spot, settling an old score,
apparently from Kentucky, where the two are seen running over rooftops, she
develops a sudden attraction for the man.
So the sheriff adds another noose for his double lynching of a stage
robber (the poorest man in town) and a murderer (a stranger), which sends Jane
into a swooning depression, only to later find a renewed sense of optimism. Walsh evidently witnessed an actual lynching
as a child, adding some degree of authenticity to this sequence, beautifully
shot with quick edits and offscreen sound, with the shadow of the hanged man
all that’s seen on the ground, a chillingly effective moment in what is
otherwise a rather humorous tale, told with a tongue-in-cheek style from the
outset, using plenty of exaggeration and understatement mixed together, almost
as if the audience is being told a bedtime story, as in subsequent tellings
other aspects might be emphasized. It’s
all blended together with a deft hand and a unique mystique, where the simplest
of stories is the least of our interest, but the embellishment of the redwoods,
the calm and collected Stranger, a man with few words, the joyous energy of
Jane, who is the picture of innocence, yet strong-willed and independent enough
to stand up to any man, and the mystifyingly beautiful natural setting is an
authentic natural treasure. The
enchanting tone gives this an upbeat feel throughout, even when real human
issues are addressed like starving, poverty, vengeance as justice, or crime and
punishment are ultimately addressed, giving this a mythical feel of living in Divine
Eden, a perfect, picturesque world, where early signs of civilization are the
purest forms of human expression, where sin is seen as violating the laws of
nature, not God or the laws of man, making this something of a Pantheist
western.
