YMMV / Baby Doll

• Jerkass Woobie: The main cast all have their moments.
  • Baby Doll is an adulterer and can be rather obnoxious but she's stuck in an Arranged Marriage to a man over twice her age and can't make a living for herself because she never received a proper education.
  • Archie Lee is a pervert, a sexual predator and a racist, and he provokes Silva Vacarro to turn against him, but his business is going bust, he's in serious debt and, of course, his wife cheats on him.
  • Silva is proud, spiteful and vengeful. He cajoles Baby Doll into the affair without a second thought and blackmails her into proof that Archie Lee did burn down his gin. However, he suffers racial prejudice as a Sicilian in Mississippi, and has had to work hard to be a successful businessman in spite of it. When Archie Lee burns his gin down, Silva feels for a moment that all of his hard work was for nothing, and he can't turn to the law because he's a foreigner.
• Retroactive Recognition: In his first film role, an uncredited Rip Torn plays the dentist Baby Doll tries to charm into hiring her as a receptionist despite her complete lack of qualifications.
• Values Dissonance: It was incredibly scandalous for 1956, including spending nearly 20 years on a shelf, but as of today it seems rather tame, with Baby Doll's affair with Silva to have only been implied.

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