Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Directed by

Edward Dmytryk

Genre

drama film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 54m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 71 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young woman travels to New Orleans and ends up working in a stylish brothel run by a tough but caring madam. The film follows the tangled relationships among the women there.

adultnoirtensemelancholicvisually lushatmosphericsomberprovocativeslow-burn

What happens

Walk on the Wild Side is a 1962 American drama film directed by Edward Dmytryk, and starring Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck. It was adapted from the 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side by American author Nelson Algren. The film was scripted by John Fante. While it passed its censors, it was an adult film noir with explicit overtones and subject matter. It walks its audience through the lives and relationships between adults (mostly women) engaged in commercial prostitution at a stylish New Orleans brothel. The brothel is run by Madam Jo (Stanwyck), who combines toughness with a motherly tenderness toward her "girls". Stanwyck returned to the big screen after a five year hiatus spent mostly on television. Life wrote "Jane Fonda portrays a grubby, footloose prostitute...just arrived in New Orleans to live in a fancy house where much of the action takes place...to get approval by the Code Authority and Legion of Decency, the movie changes some of the most evil characters into good ones, and at the end justice triumphs, not Jane." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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