AllMovie

Opening with Mrs. Wallace Reid (the former Dorothy Davenport) vouching for the authenticity of her story -- a decision that would come back to haunt her -- The Red Kimono remains a fascinating if melodramatic study of women's limited options in the first decades of the 20th century. Although the symbolism is sometimes ladled on a bit thick -- the heroine's red kimono, the scarlet sign of her degradation, is tinted throughout the otherwise black-and-white film -- Mrs. Reid's morality play remains a valuable account of a bygone era, fascinatingly filmed on location in both Los Angeles and New Orleans' French Quarter. Best known as Harold Langdon's girl in a couple of his more memorable feature comedies, Priscilla Bonner proved a fine choice to portray the unfortunate Gabrielle, a girl who just couldn't get a break. Bonner, who many years later elaborated on her work with Mrs. Reid in Jeffrey Goodman and Anthony Slide's illuminating The Silent Feminists (1993), mostly avoids the pathos that the role otherwise invited, and Theodore Von Eltz, an actor usually cast as unfeeling cads, makes a stalwart hero this time around. Beautifully restored by the Library of Congress, The Red Kimono received its much anticipated television premiere on cable station TCM in 2000.