Customer Reviews

Female [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A funny, fascinating role-reversal yarn. Ruth Chatterton, once known as one of the finest actresses of the early talkie era, plays Alison Drake, who runs a major automobile company with an iron hand - and tries to conduct her love life the same way....Then independent-minded George Brent (her real-life spouse at the time) comes along. Ruth falls for the guy so hard, that she promotes him to being the boss of the company, admitting that it's a man's job, after all. The set design is incredibly lavish: watch for the organist perched in Chatterton's entrance foyer! According to modern sources, the shots of the heroine's house were filmed at the Ennis House in the Hollywood Hills - which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Included in the cast are some familiar faces: Sterling Holloway, Laura Hope Crews, Rafaela Ottiano, Jean Muir & Irving Bacon. A fine early example of chauvinistic filmmaking.

Ruth Chatterton, an actress which I had only seen in one of my very, very favorite films of all time, William Wyler's masterpiece, "Dosworth" (her best-known movie), carries this picture, which stands remarkably well the "test of time", in a different kind of role and not only that: in "Dodsworth" she was the wife of a small-town automobile tycoon, here she is the ruthless, sexually liberated, Automobile Company Tycoon, herself.

In this flick, she manages her company, with no holds-barred, with a hand of steel, surrounded by handsome young men, who are discarded, one after the other, when they have served "her leisure purposes". A refreshing role-reversal (an very daring then), with a woman "on top". She has all the POWER.

But then comes (then-husband in real life) George Brent, who impersonates an independent-minded executive, who changes Chatterton's life...as she were expecting such dominant male?.

Nice support by Johnny Mack Brown, Gavin Gordon and Philip Reed (a "very naive" young man or something "else"? (as stated in Vieira's book "Sin in Soft Focus", a must read for Pre-Code Fans), as some of the men, who are invited to "have dinner with her", at her lavish, very luxurious house. Ravishing clothes by Orry-Kelly.

In all, a compelling, entertaining film, with fast-talking entrepreneur Chatterton in top form.

You won't regret buying this great Pre-Code.

P.S. Look for Ferdinand Gottschalk as her (Chatterton's) elder assistant, who gives a very funny performance and delivers some highly-amusing lines.

I enjoyed this very much. It is interesting what went on in these pre-production code films. This is a powerful woman who knows how to get what she wants, and even has amazing gadgetry to help her! Life in the thirties was very different, but we humans may be very much the same in how our minds work. Enjoy.

A great movie about a female running a large company back when that was more fantasy than it is today, I am a Ruth Chatterton fan and i have about 4 of her movies.To see herWith her real life husband George Brent made it even better for me, I find it strange that people are calling it old fashion and it was made in 1933

Until he took them away. No reviews on this one for several years. Maybe everyone is waiting for the dvd version in March. The often told tale of a strong women using & disposing of men. However. in this early version, Alison (Ruth Chatterton), starts out on top. She is the ultimate practitioner of compartmentalism. Daytime, she is the boss, all business, as the president of her auto company. At night she is also the boss. She's like a cat in heat & goes through a string of boy-toys that work for her, leaving broken hearts in her wake. Then she hires George Brett. He doesn't play her game. He is all business, day & night. It drives her nuts because for once she has fallen in love with an employee. She has met a man stronger than she is. This movie is included in Forbidden Hollywood vol. 2, next year with documentaries, commentaries, etc. I've only seen this once, some time ago so am looking forward to the collection on dvd.

Ruth Chatterton stirred the censors in the 1933 pre-code favourite FEMALE, the story of a woman who conducts her lovelife as matter-of-factly as she does her large industrial empire.

Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) is quite literally a woman in a man's world. She inherited her father's booming automobile business after his death, and has run the firm with an iron fist. Male employees who catch her eye are often invited back to her mansion after-hours, and seduced to the ominous strains of "Shanghai Lil", played either on the grammophone or, most bizarrely, by an in-house organist. When any of her lovers tries to get possessive, they are promptly packed off to the Montreal factory.

Beginning to tire of her usual sex games, Alison ventures off one night to see if she can attract a man without her name or money clouding the situation. At a sideshow fair she meets Jim Thorne (George Brent), and the sparks fly naturally for a change. But Alison gets the shock of her life when, the following morning, Jim turns out to be a new employee at the car factory! Desperately in love, Alison reverts back to her old tricks in a bid to hold her man, but she's going to have to swallow her pride - and become the woman she's always kept hidden away...

Coming right at the tail-end of the pre-code era, FEMALE suffered under the wrath of the SRC (a precursor to what became the Production Code in 1934); and the film itself was banned from any possible re-release until the Production Code was dissolved in the 1950's. Married in real life at the time, Ruth Chatterton and George Brent both deliver fabulous performances. In what's arguably her best screen role, Ruth Chatterton revels in some snappy dialogue (in one scene, where Alison is quizzed on why she doesn't want a husband, Alison snaps back in rapid-fire fashion, "I'd rather have a canary!").

Available on DVD as part of TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female).

This was a wonderful copy of the 1933 version of "female", I am very glad that I purchased it.

Female is the story about a woman who acts like a man. Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) runs an automobile company and she uses her influence to bring men home with her. She is a machine at the office, but she softens up just enough to seduce her employees at home to the tune of "Shanghai Lil." The next day it is business as usual; she doesn't even call them again. It is a unique situation, but one day Alison wanders to a carnival and meets a man there (George Brent). They flirt and spend some time together, but he doesn't try to pick her up. Offended but intruiged, she is shocked to find her company has just hired him on. She tries to utilize her feminine wiles to seduce him but he will have none of it.

This movie is interesting as a pre-code, but it raises some women's issues as well. Is it okay for a woman to behave like a man, and if she does, must she give up being Female? Alison referrs to herself as a "superwoman" on several occasions; Molly Haskell goes into the meaning of the word in depth in her book From Reverence to Rape. According to Haskell, a superwoman is a woman who lives as a man, even to the point of abandoning her seductive qualities. What is interesting is seeing the transition Chatterton makes from a superwoman to a superfemale and why she chooses to change. Maybe the story is a bit old fashioned, and it certainly isn't all that exciting, but it is a nice time capsule.