Review of She Done Him Wrong (1933) by George P — 08 Apr 2008

Mae West plays Lady Lou, a madame, of sorts, and the profiteer of a crime syndicate that plays off screen, in the background of a glitzy saloon. Men come and go, and Lou pretty much tells them all to come up to her room. "When women go wrong, men go right after them," she says. There is some truth, to that, but the way it dominates the film makes the film rather one dimensional. There's some mystery, and suspense, but not much.

As a comedy, She Done Him Wrong has some fantastic quotables from Mae West, but if you watch for Cary Grant, you really won't see him too often. The film is just over an hour long, yet the event progression still feels rather slow. Half of the movie is spent wondering "who will come up to Lou's room?" And most of the interesting, crime stuff, is only talked about, which makes the film feel like more of a play than a movie. Throw in a "Russian Rita," who sounds strangely Spanish (as does Grant), and you have a rather old film with a plot that is rather simple: aggressive dame does men wrong and gets out of heat by offering some. Great for the lingo and feel of the film, from the opening fades onward, but an unfulfilled ending, for me. I was more attracted to Sally, a young girl who gets caught up in the saloon and, tries to off herself, only to be saved by Lou. Even Russian Rita was more interesting to me than Lou, when it came down to it.