Let's talk about how Dutch flirts with Mary-Beth.
Dutch doesn’t flirt like a man seeking intimacy; he flirts like a man seeking applause. For Dutch, flirting is performance, not pursuit.
A romantic in the theatrical sense (grand speeches, ideals, dramatic gestures).
A showman who feeds on admiration and deeply self-centred, though he’d call it “confidence” or “vision.”
When he flirts with Mary-Beth, I don’t see desire either. I see:
The gang leader enjoying being admired.
A man basking in youthful attention because it reassures him he’s still important.
Someone who likes being seen as charming, clever, irresistible.
Mary-Beth is sweet, pretty, warm, of course she responds. But Dutch responding back isn’t about her as a person. It’s about how she makes him feel about himself.
I think there's an interaction in the camp, if I remember correctly, where Dutch asks Miss Grimshaw to dance, and when she leaves laughing and blushing, he says something like, “I'm still in good shape”. He LIVES to make women feel that way, it feeds his ego, he feels powerful.
That’s the core of it. Not “I still want her,” but “I still got it.” It’s full ego maintenance. A mirror, not a connection. And crucially: if Dutch actually wanted Mary-Beth, it would look very different. Dutch doesn’t do subtle longing. He does big, possessive, dramatic love. See Annabelle, see Molly (at least at first). When he loves, it’s obsessive, consuming, and self-mythologizing. A quiet 21-year-old girl who writes novels and dreams of a soft future? That doesn’t fit his narrative at all.
This doesn’t make the flirting “okay,” especially with the power imbalance and the age gap, but it does make it coherent: It’s not predatory lust. It’s vanity. It’s control through charm. It’s Dutch reassuring himself that he’s still the sun everyone orbits.
Dutch doesn’t flirt because he wants them. He flirts because he wants to be wanted. And honestly? That’s way more revealing —and damning— than if he were just a creep.
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