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6.4/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.4/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Strange Love of Molly Louvain remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like your movies fast, dirty, and not particularly concerned with being polite, then yes, jump right in. This is definitely for the crowd that prefers 1930s grit over polished studio gloss. If you need your protagonists to make sensible life choices or want a neat, happy ending, you might want to look elsewhere. Like, maybe The Millionaire's Double instead?
Ann Dvorak is the whole show here. She plays Molly with this twitchy, desperate energy that feels way more real than the standard starlets of the time. She doesn't just act; she sort of vibrates through the scenes.
The movie starts with her trying to do the right thing, or at least the respectable thing, with her sweetheart Ralph. But then the whole thing just goes sideways. Real fast. Like, blink-and-you-miss-it fast.
It’s funny, I keep thinking about how much tougher this is than something like Across to Singapore. There's no romance here, just survival. It feels like a punch in the gut that you kind of asked for.
There is a scene in a hotel lobby that goes on for a beat too long, and you can see the background actors just kind of shifting their weight, waiting for the camera to move. It’s weirdly distracting but also kind of endearing in a they-were-making-this-up-as-they-went sort of way.
By the time it wraps up, you don't feel like you've watched a masterpiece. You feel like you've just come off a very long, very dusty bus ride. And honestly? That's exactly what this kind of movie should do. It doesn't need to be profound. It just needs to keep moving until it runs out of gas. And it does.
