Safe in Hell (1931)
Directed by William A. Wellman

Film Review

It is interesting to speculate how Safe in Hell would have turned out if it had been made just a few years later, once the Hollywood Production Code had come into force - probably a trite melodrama that casually glosses over the raunchier aspects of Houston Branch's stage play.  Unhampered by such constraints, director William A. Wellman is not only faithful to the original play, he accentuates its seedier aspects and the result is one of the most provocatively sensual films to come out of Hollywood in the early 1930s.  The film doesn't beat about the bush as subsequent American films of the decade had to (to appease the censor).  From the very first shot, a lingering, salacious glimpse of a call girl posing languorously in her bedroom, we know at once the profession of the main character and have some idea of where the film is likely to go.

As lurid as the opening is, it isn't until the action shifts to the Caribbean, specifically a squalid sun-baked hotel that might well pass for a brothel, that Wellman begins to fully exploit the lubricious possibilities offered by Branch's play.  The only white woman on the set, Dorothy Mackaill is the focus of attention, not only for us, but also for the pack of lascivious wolves that surround her, a bunch of leering grotesques who clearly have only one thing on their mind.  The sexual tension in the confined, sweaty setting becomes unbearable and supports the gradually building dramatic tension as the heroine is drawn further into the trap from which there is no escape and which forces her ultimately to choose between death and dishonour.  No wonder critics of the time were shocked by the film.  This is racy stuff.

The central theme of the film - a strong-willed woman resolutely refusing to give in to adversity and the dominant male - is one that Wellman dealt with many times, but here, assisted by a leading actress of rare talent and charisma, he surpasses himself.  A classy English lass who exuded star quality from every pore, Dorothy Mackaill was a star of the silent era and prefigures the tough Hollywood heroines that came along in the 1940s.  Here, she excels in a role that might well have been tailor-made for her, a strong-willed but inwardly vulnerable woman struggling to survive in a man's world.  Far from being a trite melodrama, Safe in Hell is a harrowingly authentic account of a fallen woman's attempt to regain her dignity and redeem herself in the face of overwhelming odds.  Yes, the plot is ludicrously contrived, but Wellman tackles it with such style and honesty that this hardly matters.  The final sequence of Gilda being led away to her doom, having bid a final agonising farewell to her lover, is one of the most beautiful and poignant in the director's entire oeuvre.

Film Synopsis

Gilda Karlson, a New Orleans call girl, finds herself accused of murdering Piet Van Saal, the man who drove her into a life of prostitution.  She is about to leave town when her boyfriend, sailor Carl Erickson, shows up and offers to marry her.  When he hears Gilda's story, Carl is initially shocked but decides to smuggle her out of the country.  He takes her to the Caribbean island of Tortuga, where she is safe from extradition.  After an improvised marriage, Carl leaves Gilda, promising to return as soon as he can.  Staying at a seedy hotel, Gilda immediately attracts the attention of its boarders, an unsavoury ensemble of crooks and killers, and the island's sadistic law enforcer, Bruno.  Gilda keeps herself to herself until she fails to receive the letter Carl promised to send her, with some money (the letter has been stolen by Bruno).  She then begins to flirt with her fellow boarders.  One day, she is surprised when another exile arrives at the hotel: Van Saal, the man she thought she had killed...