Raoul Walsh - The Revolt of Mamie Stover

In 1941, prostitute Mamie Stover has no choice but to flee San Francisco when the police turn on her and want her out of town. Figuring Hawaii would be a great place to begin anew, Stover books a trip aboard a Honolulu-bound boat, where she happens to meet writer Jim Blair who is quite taken with the former streetwalker. However, when the ship reaches Hawaii, Stover soon falls back into her old ways and begins working at a nightclub, much to Blair’s dismay.

The story of this “rebellious woman” is “explosive.” Jane Russell perfectly incarnates an unusual female character with her fighter’s broad shoulders. She is the female equivalent of the implacable and conquering hero who wants to take the world in her fist. [...] The Revolt of Mamie Stover is an unconventional film, typical of Walsh’s last period, when he had even less patience with red tape and was more explicit in his speech, more focused on his filming, as well as the dismantling of the internal mechanisms of the more typical and standardised Hollywood filmmaking, and so of his own cinema.

Ermanno Comuzio, Walsh, La Nuova Italia, 1982.