So yeah, the racefail is self-evidently huge and blatant, but the depiction of the central character is ... actually unexpected.
I'll watch it if it comes around on TCM. It sounds worth it for Bow and everything up until the noble savage ex machina.
(Speaking of inextricable racefail, did I point you toward Girl of the Port (1930)? The ratio came out the other way on that one, I think, but I don't regret seeing it just for the WTF of its trainwreck, even if thinking about it still makes me want to shout at people across time.)
What this is also making me think of is Massacre (1934), a Warners pre-Code that does some really interesting stereotype-busting at the same time as it does some really irritating stereotype-reinforcing, also Richard Barthelmess and Ann Dvorak are not Native and no amount of script insistence is going to make them so.
Re: Clara Bow tangent
I'll watch it if it comes around on TCM. It sounds worth it for Bow and everything up until the noble savage ex machina.
(Speaking of inextricable racefail, did I point you toward Girl of the Port (1930)? The ratio came out the other way on that one, I think, but I don't regret seeing it just for the WTF of its trainwreck, even if thinking about it still makes me want to shout at people across time.)
What this is also making me think of is Massacre (1934), a Warners pre-Code that does some really interesting stereotype-busting at the same time as it does some really irritating stereotype-reinforcing, also Richard Barthelmess and Ann Dvorak are not Native and no amount of script insistence is going to make them so.