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7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Red-Headed Woman remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you want a movie that moves like a bullet and doesn't care about being 'likable,' then yes, watch it immediately. If you need your protagonists to have a moral compass or at least a shred of decency, stay far away. You will probably hate Lil, but you won't be able to look away.
Jean Harlow is electric here. She plays Lil like she is constantly trying to win a game that only she knows the rules to. She doesn't just want the guy; she wants the house, the clothes, and the status. She treats her boss's marriage like an obstacle course she is sprinting through in heels.
There is this one scene where she is laughing in the mirror, and it is honestly kind of terrifying. It is not a 'villain' laugh, exactly. It is just someone who is genuinely surprised by how easy it is to get what she wants. She doesn't have a grand plan. She just has impulse control issues and a lot of nerve.
The pacing is breathless. The movie doesn't bother with long, drawn-out justifications for why she is the way she is. She just is. It feels very different from the slow-burn dramas of that era, like The Way of the World, which felt a lot stiffer by comparison. This thing feels like it was written on a dare.
I noticed that the lighting in the office scenes makes her hair look like it is literally glowing. Maybe that was intentional? Maybe it was just the film stock. Either way, it makes her stand out against all those stuffy, gray-suited men like a neon sign in a library.
Una Merkel is in this too, and she is the perfect foil. She plays the friend who is just trying to keep up, looking at Lil like she is witnessing a car crash in slow motion. Her expressions are great, mostly just variations of 'I cannot believe you actually just did that.'
The dialogue is sharp, but not in that overly poetic way. It sounds like people actually talking, if those people were all trying to backstab each other. Some of the lines feel like they were scribbled on napkins right before the cameras started rolling. I mean that as a compliment.
It gets a little messy toward the end. It is like the writers realized they had to wrap things up and just sort of threw the plot at the wall to see what stuck. It doesn't quite hold together, but I didn't really care. The ride was already worth the price of admission.
Not every movie needs to teach you a lesson. Sometimes, it is just fun to watch someone burn down the house because they wanted a better view. 💅
IMDb 6
1931
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