(John Francis Dillon, 1932, USA, 35mm, 87 min.)
Part of Block Cinema’s Hot Saturdays: Gems from Pre-Code Hollywood Series
Clara Bow delivers a knock out punch as Nasa “Dynamite” Springer, a Texas socialite incapable of controlling her temper. Showcasing Bow’s trademark feistiness, Call Her Savage luxuriates in pre-Code provocation, placing the willful Nasa in a panoply of unsavory settings: Chicago speakeasies, New Orleans slums, and an anarchist café in the East Village complete with a gay cabaret (a scene later immortalized in the documentary The Celluloid Closet). Over-the-top yet affecting, Bow turns in a stellar performance as the titular “savage,” a woman whose inborn ferocity stymies all attempts at her domestication.
Cost: Block members; University faculty, staff $4.00; Students with valid student ID $4.00; General public $6.00
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