Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 117: Mon Apr 28

Red Dust (Fleming, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This screens as part of the Passport to Cinema season and is also being shown on April 29 & 30.

Here is the BFI introduction: Playing an undisguised prostitute, Jean Harlow exemplifies pre-Code Hollywood in this Somerset Maughamesque tale of colonial folk undone by rampant nature on a rubber plantation in Indo-China. Harlow mainly lingers, and smoulders, on the sidelines of Dennis Carson’s (Clark Gable) affair with the very ‘proper’ Barbara (Mary Astor), but she also has some choice comments, as when reading a children’s bedtime story to the convalescent Carson: ‘A chipmunk and a rabbit – say, I wonder how this comes out?’

The screening on 28 April will be introduced by Richard Combs.

Here (and above) is an extract.