If one wanted to define pulp Allan Dwan's 'Slightly Scarlet' probably would serve as an excellent epitome what movies are concerned. While watching I sometimes couldn't help but wonder how this would look on a printed page and in doing so I couldn't picture it on anything else but on cheap paper as part of a paperback novel with one of those typical, endlessly intriguing, vibrant artworks on the cover. Every character is pretty much defined by one goal and beyond that they have no self-doubts or really any past (unless maybe a scene calls for it). Characters are very much driven by the plot rather than the other way around. Just to name one more blatant out of about a thousand examples, a young car mechanic asks the male lead if he can borrow his undoubtedly expensive car to impress a girl. The two don't seem to be close (although such a thing is always difficult to tell in this film) but without batting an eye he throws over the car keys which, to me, really didn't seem like something this character would do, but knowing what kind of film I was dealing with I waited to see what they were setting up with this scene plot-wise. Sure enough only seconds later the young man starts the engine and the car explodes, this little out-of-character moment saved the leading man's life and it established that the bad guys are after him.
It's certainly melodramatic but not sentimental. The dialogues are alright and overall fun but given the potential they are relatively mundane, they don't have a real zing to them. The ongoings are pretty sleazy for a film made during the time of the Hays code, especially considering that the sleaze is mostly direct instead of being cleverly encoded in innuendo like many of the great films of that time did that dealt with sexual material. The performances are all pretty reasonable not to say almost restrained considering the material, only Dorothy actress Arlene Dahl fully embraces the opportunity and has visible fun with her licentious character without being overbearing.
Visually it's unspectacular (especially compared to many of cinematographer John Alton's other works) but nevertheless pleasant-looking especially due to the extensive use of shadows even though it's in flaming Technicolor so the effect is very different compared to the one of movies with much more genre-typical high-contrasted B&W photography. The shadows are decidedly more expressive in the scenes with baddie Solly Caspar (I like that name) and his gang of thugs which use low angle lighting that casts big shadows while scenes with the women of course use high angles for the key light that make the actresses' hair glow to give them the conventional glamor look. The SuperScope (2.00:1 AR) is rather well used and the set design with its choice of color palette does its part in giving the film its flaming look, special mention goes to the fact that both leading ladies have red hair, not exactly a common sight.
Editing is sloppy, Allan Dwan's film usually uses dissolves between sequences and especially in the first half it often seemed like the scene wasn't really played out yet with characters sometimes even being seen continuing to talk to each other (without sound) while the picture fades out. The film overall lacks much flow with sometimes long and sometimes oddly short scenes crammed in for exposition purposes, some of which I thought weren't even needed at all. 'Slightly Scarlet' certainly isn't emotionally engaging let alone clever but somehow I never ran risk of losing interest. I didn't find the content dramatically noir-ish, just extremely pulpy, and despite expressive lighting the color and the widescreen make this even visually an atypical inclusion in the film noir cannon (at least TSPDT consider it to be a film noir). I actually think that it must have been quite a crowd-pleaser with female audiences given that the female characters are neither your average submissive 50's Hollywood housewives nor typical femme fatales since they are fairly independent and philandering but never condemned for it by the film or male characters not to mention the movie's final outcome...
It's certainly melodramatic but not sentimental. The dialogues are alright and overall fun but given the potential they are relatively mundane, they don't have a real zing to them. The ongoings are pretty sleazy for a film made during the time of the Hays code, especially considering that the sleaze is mostly direct instead of being cleverly encoded in innuendo like many of the great films of that time did that dealt with sexual material. The performances are all pretty reasonable not to say almost restrained considering the material, only Dorothy actress Arlene Dahl fully embraces the opportunity and has visible fun with her licentious character without being overbearing.
Visually it's unspectacular (especially compared to many of cinematographer John Alton's other works) but nevertheless pleasant-looking especially due to the extensive use of shadows even though it's in flaming Technicolor so the effect is very different compared to the one of movies with much more genre-typical high-contrasted B&W photography. The shadows are decidedly more expressive in the scenes with baddie Solly Caspar (I like that name) and his gang of thugs which use low angle lighting that casts big shadows while scenes with the women of course use high angles for the key light that make the actresses' hair glow to give them the conventional glamor look. The SuperScope (2.00:1 AR) is rather well used and the set design with its choice of color palette does its part in giving the film its flaming look, special mention goes to the fact that both leading ladies have red hair, not exactly a common sight.
Editing is sloppy, Allan Dwan's film usually uses dissolves between sequences and especially in the first half it often seemed like the scene wasn't really played out yet with characters sometimes even being seen continuing to talk to each other (without sound) while the picture fades out. The film overall lacks much flow with sometimes long and sometimes oddly short scenes crammed in for exposition purposes, some of which I thought weren't even needed at all. 'Slightly Scarlet' certainly isn't emotionally engaging let alone clever but somehow I never ran risk of losing interest. I didn't find the content dramatically noir-ish, just extremely pulpy, and despite expressive lighting the color and the widescreen make this even visually an atypical inclusion in the film noir cannon (at least TSPDT consider it to be a film noir). I actually think that it must have been quite a crowd-pleaser with female audiences given that the female characters are neither your average submissive 50's Hollywood housewives nor typical femme fatales since they are fairly independent and philandering but never condemned for it by the film or male characters not to mention the movie's final outcome...