The film's opening sequence is designed to keep you hanging around as a bevy of nude women are shown swimming and cavorting in a sunlit pond. The scene is actually very artfully done and even offers a glimpse of full frontal nudity, probably more surprising than shocking because it happens so quickly. One of the swimmers is Marlene Dietrich, appearing in a subsequent scene speaking to future husband Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) from behind a rock, with dry blond locks even though she was fully underwater a mere minute ago.
You know, when Dietrich sang 'Those drums bring out the devil inside me' she wasn't kidding around. That line from the 'Hot Voodoo' musical number followed a striptease of sorts, as Dietrich sheds a gorilla costume!! amid a chorus line of faux-African girls doing a night club act. The showgirl job was meant to earn money for her husband's much needed radium poisoning treatment available only in Europe, but it wasn't long before Helen Faraday/Jones came to rely on businessman Nick Townsend's (Cary Grant) largess to offer more than she could earn as a performer. You know, it might not seem like much today, but that three hundred dollar check Nick wrote out to Helen would have had depression era movie-goers gasping for air.
Aside from it's shock value, the story itself didn't proceed very believably for me once under way. For starters, I couldn't imagine who might be keeping tabs on Case #3012 every time we see this visible hand making an entry following Helen's progress throughout the South after leaving her husband. With now ex-husband Ned's determination to retrieve their son from a life on the run, Helen's descent into flophouse squalor was shed rather quickly in a return to former glory, but this time to the stylish cafes of Paris. The film ends on a positive note, though obviously a head scratcher as Helen reunites with her family in a feel good ending that just doesn't feel...right, given all that went before.
Aside from the story, I was surprised to note old favorite Sterling Holloway in an uncredited appearance as the talkative hiker during the opening segment, and Hattie McDaniel, who's always a hoot, has an uncanny observation regarding Cary Grant's character finding favor with Helen - "That white man's up to somethin'". Indeed he was.
You know, when Dietrich sang 'Those drums bring out the devil inside me' she wasn't kidding around. That line from the 'Hot Voodoo' musical number followed a striptease of sorts, as Dietrich sheds a gorilla costume!! amid a chorus line of faux-African girls doing a night club act. The showgirl job was meant to earn money for her husband's much needed radium poisoning treatment available only in Europe, but it wasn't long before Helen Faraday/Jones came to rely on businessman Nick Townsend's (Cary Grant) largess to offer more than she could earn as a performer. You know, it might not seem like much today, but that three hundred dollar check Nick wrote out to Helen would have had depression era movie-goers gasping for air.
Aside from it's shock value, the story itself didn't proceed very believably for me once under way. For starters, I couldn't imagine who might be keeping tabs on Case #3012 every time we see this visible hand making an entry following Helen's progress throughout the South after leaving her husband. With now ex-husband Ned's determination to retrieve their son from a life on the run, Helen's descent into flophouse squalor was shed rather quickly in a return to former glory, but this time to the stylish cafes of Paris. The film ends on a positive note, though obviously a head scratcher as Helen reunites with her family in a feel good ending that just doesn't feel...right, given all that went before.
Aside from the story, I was surprised to note old favorite Sterling Holloway in an uncredited appearance as the talkative hiker during the opening segment, and Hattie McDaniel, who's always a hoot, has an uncanny observation regarding Cary Grant's character finding favor with Helen - "That white man's up to somethin'". Indeed he was.