Synopsis
Gilda (Mackaill), a prostitute, believes that she has killed a client, Piet Van Saal (Harolde), who was attacking her. Her sailor boyfriend Carl (Cook) takes her to a small island where he believes she will be safe from the law. She must wait for his return, and she pledges her faithfulness. The island is home to a motley group of criminals who are also sheltering from arrest. Mr. Bruno (Wallace), the strongman of the island rules absolutely. He wants Gilda, but she refuses him.
Van Saal, who was not killed, appears on the island, and Gilda thinks that she will be able to go home. However, Van Saal attacks her again, and this time she does kill him. At her trial she is defended by Jones (Middleton), a disgraced lawyer. She is about to be acquitted when Mr. Bruno tells her that she will be arrested for possession of a gun and spend six months in jail under his control. Rather than submit to him, she confesses to murder. The penalty is death by hanging. As she is led away, Gilda asks Jones to send Carl a letter telling him that she remained true.
TCM Film Festival, 2013
Safe in Hell was presented in the
Journeys of Self Discovery
theme at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2013.
Film historian Donald Bogle discussed the film with William Wellman Jr., son of
the well-regarded director and author of
The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best
Picture
(2006).
Wellman, who loved making movies, made eighteen films for Warner Bros. during the
1930s, eight of them (including Safe in Hell) in the
women-in-trouble
subgenre. He worked well with major female stars, such as
Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard. Wellman's projects were chosen
by the studio, and a casting director chose the cast. Dorothy Mackaill was likely
chosen because she was available at the time the film was about to start. An
experienced actress, Mackaill is an excellent choice for the character; she is
entirely believable as a woman who has been well used by men and earnestly wishes
to remake her life.
Wellman was creative with this downbeat film. He added humor (especially involving
the motley assortment of criminals), a variety of camera angles, and different
approaches to opening and closing scenes. The cast includes two black performers,
Nina Mae McKinney and Clarence Muse, playing the owners of the hotel where
Mackaill and the criminals are living. McKinney, a talented singer and actress,
had starred in King Vidor's African American musical
Hallelujah (1929). In Safe in Hell she sings
Sleepy Time Down South,
written by Muse, Leon Rene and Otis Rene, possibly
the first filmed version of the jazz standard. Muse, who plays her husband, had a
cultivated British accent rather than the racist movie dialect
spoken by
African American men at the period. His first line surprises the viewer who
expects the usual derogatory dialect of a black character in a film from this
period. (This same element of surprise is used to comic effect in his appearance
in Flying Down to Rio.)
Further Reading