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2014.04.10
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The Red Kimona (1925) DVD5 - Silent Movie with English Inter-Titles [DDR]
The Red Kimona (1925) is a silent film drama about prostitution produced by Dorothy Davenport (billed as Mrs. Wallace Reid) and starring Priscilla Bonner.
The film is notable today for being one of the few independent productions produced and written by women.
This is the third of Davenport's "social conscience" releases, preceded by Human Wreckage (1923) on the topic of drug addiction (released five months after Wallace Reid's death from morphine), and Broken Laws (1924) about excessive mother-love.
The film is based on a real case of prostitution that took place in New Orleans in 1917. This film, being very frank about the real case, used the real name of the woman played by Priscilla Bonner who as a consequence sued producer Dorothy Davenport for a hefty sum in court and won. As with Davenport's earlier Human Wreckage in 1924, this film was banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors in 1926.
A copy of this film is preserved at the Library of Congress.
CAST:-
Priscilla Bonner - Gabrielle Darley
Nellie Bly Baker - Clara Johnson, Gabrielle's neighbor
Carl Miller - Howard Blaine
Mary Carr - Prison Matron
Virginia Pearson - Mrs. Beverly Fontaine
Tyrone Power, Sr. - Gabrielle's father
Sheldon Lewis - District Attorney
Theodore von Eltz - Terrance O'Day or, Freddy Fred the Chauffeur
Emily Fitzroy - The Housekeeper
George Siegmann - Mr. Mack, A Client
Dot Farley - Inquisitive Woman
Max Asher (actor)|Max Asher - H.E. Reid, a Jeweler
Dorothy Davenport - Woman narrating the story (unbilled)
Ellinor Vanderveer - Woman with Defense Attorney's Wife
Lottie Williams - Crying Woman in rag clothes in Courtroom
SYNOPSIS:- The Red Kimona (1925) Silent Film
In THE RED KIMONA, Priscilla Bonner plays Darley, a small town girl who finds escape from her cruel home life in the arms of a handsome stranger. Soon she finds herself working as a prostitute in New Orleans, desperately clinging to the belief that he really loves her. When she discovers him buying an engagement ring for another woman, she shoots him. Her murder trial becomes a cause celebre and Gabrielle finds herself befriended by a rich society woman who professes deep concern for the unfortunate girl. Directed by Dorothy Reid.
Three of Hollywood's more enterprising women created this sentimental treatise on sin and redemption: Mrs. Wallace Reid (the former actress Dorothy Davenport) produced and co-directed (with Walter Lang) and Dorothy Arzner's screenplay was based on a story by influential journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns. Priscilla Bonner starred as Gabrielle Darley, a real-life prostitute acquitted of murdering her procurer in 1917. Left in a New Orleans brothel by a bounder she mistakenly believed to be her fiancé, Gabrielle tracks down the man (Carl Miller) in a Los Angeles jewelry shop and kills him in cold blood. Immediately regretting her brutal act, Gabrielle is resigned to her fate when the jury surprisingly returns a verdict of not guilty. A free woman, Gabrielle wants to change her wayward life by becoming a nurse, but is instead invited to live in the palatial Wilshire Boulevard estate of Mrs. Fontaine (Virginia Pearson). With Freddy the chauffeur (Theodore Von Eltz) as her only ally, Gabrielle is cruelly paraded in front of Mrs. Fontaine's society friends, some of whom "have skipped a matinee to see you." Tiring of the notoriety quickly enough, Mrs. Fontaine arranges for an interview with the local hospital, knowing full well that Gabrielle's sordid past will prohibit her ever becoming a nurse. Distraught and penniless, Gabrielle returns to New Orleans, never realizing that Freddy is desperately searching for her. Chased by a pimp in the French Quarter, the exhausted girl runs out into the crowded street and is hit by a passing car. While recovering in the hospital, she fortuitously learns that the hospital needs personnel due to the devastating influenza epidemic and is soon employed as a cleaning woman. It is in the hospital where she is finally found by Freddy as he arrives with soldiers wounded overseas.
Despite being shipped off to fight the war in Europe the following day, the former chauffeur vows to return and make Gabrielle his wife. A huge box-office success, The Red Kimono ended up nearly bankrupting Mrs. Reid when the real Gabrielle Darley sued for libel. In the end, Darley won a huge settlement that included the Beverly Hills home which Reid had shared with her late husband, 1910s matinee-idol Wallace Reid.
SYNOPSIS:- The Red Kimona (1925)
The precursor to the exploitation cinema of the 1930s and '40s, The Red Kimona (1925) is a shocking story of female degradation and redemption. The film begins with a direct
camera address from the film's producer, Mrs. Wallace Reid, in which she appears at a newspaper office "morgue" to introduce the story of young Gabrielle Darley (Priscilla Bonner) accused in 1917 of murder.
In flashback Gabrielle recounts how as a young, innocent girl with an unhappy home life she fell in love with a handsome, fast-talking older man. Promising love and marriage, Howard Blaine (Carl Miller) eventually brings Gabrielle to New Orleans, where he sets her up in the red light district as a prostitute.
When Gabrielle discovers that Howard is planning to marry another woman she travels to Los Angeles to see him and ends up shooting him in a fit of despair. Because of Howard's treatment of her, Gabrielle is found not guilty and taken in by a society woman who exploits her misfortune for the entertainment of her rich friends. The woman's kindly chauffeur Frederick (Theodore von Eltz) takes pity on Gabrielle and offers the possibility of love despite all of Gabrielle's misfortunes.
At the film's conclusion Mrs. Reid appears again to warn audiences against judging Gabrielle. Reid's husband, who she married in 1913, was the well known actor Wallace Reid, one of Famous Players-Lasky's biggest stars. But in 1919 after being involved in a train wreck, Reid was given morphine, to which he became addicted. Reid died at 31 from drug addiction in 1923 at the height of his fame.
His wife, once known as Dorothy Davenport and called by The Universal Weekly, "one of the youngest, classiest, most bewitching actresses of our time" found a new sense of purpose after her beloved husband's death. She became a producer, writer and director of films dealing with social issues. Her first film, which she produced and starred in, was an exposé on drug addiction and a virtual biopic of her husband, Human Wreckage (1923). The film was a huge success.
But The Red Kimona, produced by Reid's newly formed production company, was undoubtedly Reid's most sensational film for centering on prostitution in such detail. The film was adapted by future director Dorothy Arzner from a magazine story by the sensational writer Adela Rogers St. Johns. Hallmarks of Arzner's particularly female style can be found in the film, like the close female bond established between Gabrielle and her prostitute neighbor in New Orleans, Clara.
Bonner, who is beautifully effective as Gabrielle, specialized in playing innocent young girls. As Arthur James noted in a Variety review "Priscilla Bonner has a Gish quality with a greater vitality and in a role requiring the utmost delicacy to conserve its sympathy she demonstrates unusual power. Cast in the right roles and well directed, this young woman has no handicap to place her at the top rung of the ladder."
Upon the film's release, Reid was sued by the real Gabrielle Darley, living in St. Louis and happily married, who claimed that her privacy had been invaded. Reid had not bothered to change the name of her heroine for the sake of the picture. The real Mrs. Darley, who was shunned by many of her friends when they discovered her sordid past, won the lawsuit, leaving Reid penniless.
Critics were not kind to The Red Kimona. The New York Times unfairly observed "there have been a number of wretched pictures on Broadway during the last year, but none seem to have quite reached the low level of The Red Kimona."
Modern viewers may be surprised by the vitriol of such reviews of the day since the film itself is a gripping account of not only Gabrielle's plight, beautifully evoked by Bonner, but of the social hypocrisies which kept women like Gabrielle forever tainted a fallen woman.
Like Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978), The Red Kimona documented the Storyville district of New Orleans, a den of drugs, gambling and prostitution which Mayor Story relegated to one district of the city. Poorer prostitutes like Gabrielle worked out of one-room shacks called "cribs" while pricier prostitutes were advertised in a "Blue Book."
Reid went on to make The Earth Woman also starring Bonner in 1926 about hardworking homesteaders. Reid continued to produce films and television including the 1934 True Life Photoplays exploitation film The Road to Ruin which Film Daily called "a frank presentation of the pitfalls of youth, and it whitewashes none of the characters. The results of their folly, ignorance, and carelessness are pointed graphically for the moral."
Reid believed in the power of reaching a female audience by including women in some part of the filmmaking process, whether as writers or producers.
"I believe it takes a woman to believe in a woman's motives, and every story intended for the screen, should have a woman working on it at some stage, to convince the audience of women."
In addition to her film work, the tireless and dedicated Reid also established the Wallace Reid Foundation Sanitarium, a drug addiction treatment center.
           
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:-
Video Codec: MPEG-2
Video Bitrate: 4999 kbps
Video Resolution: 720x480
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1
Frames Per Second: 23.976
Audio Codec: AC3
Audio Bitrate: 192kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: English
RunTime 77 mins
Subtitles: None
Ripped by: Trinidad [DDR]
Duration: 77 mins |
