WHITE WOMAN (1933)

Carole Lombard is a morally suspect woman (her husband was apparently driven to suicide because of her promiscuity) making a living as a club singer in Malaysia. A snooty British lawyer is working on getting her deported for being a white woman who has lowered herself to entertaining the natives. But Charles Laughton, a roughneck Cockney who worked himself up from the slums to become a rich plantation owner known as King of the River, takes pity on her and marries her. At his jungle home along the river, she discovers that his help consists of criminals in hiding whom he basically enslaves in exchange for keeping them away from justice. Overseer Kent Taylor, whom, we are told emphatically, hasn't seen a white woman in years, cozies up to Lombard, and she to him. Laughton, knowing about his wife's attraction, taunts the two with a story about Taylor suffering from (what we would now call) post-traumatic stress disorder because years ago his best friend was decapitated by natives, and his head was tossed through a window, landing at Taylor's feet. (Of course, using Chekhov's gun as a narrative principle, we know that a head is going to end up in play eventually.) Lombard and Taylor try to run away together, but Laughton threatens to sic the natives on them before they get very far, so Taylor winds up sent to another station up the river. The next overseer, Charles Bickford, a chain gang escapee, is only slightly less sleazy and threatening than Laughton, though Bickford asks Lombard, as Taylor is leaving, "Do you come under the heading of overseer duties?" Soon, however, Laughton's unquestioned rule of the river suffers when he refuses two natives who are demanding more trading freedom. When Laughton unwisely spits in their faces and sends them away, the natives become restless (as the cliché notes) and all the white people's lives may be in danger.

This is a fairly wild and wooly exotic melodrama from the pre-Code era, so Lombard's character can remain tainted without explaining away her behavior or necessarily getting punished in the end as the Production Code would have insisted. Laughton is the big draw here, giving a juicy, scenery-chewing performance; if you don’t like him in this mode, you may want to skip this, but he is as gross and slimy a villain as you'll encounter in any 30s movie. It took me a while to get used to his over-the-top performance, particularly when everyone else is so serious, but I do think he is effective. Taylor and Bickford are believable as the types they play, Lombard a little less so as she tends to fade into the helpless woman mode in the face of the three strong male performances. However, despite this and despite the non-PC attitudes on display, this is a fun pre-Code relic. Pictured are Bickford and Lombard. [DVD]