Ida Lupino

[CineMaven]

ChiO, you probably could teach the class.

[JackFavell]

ChiO, you probably could teach the class.

Shhhh. Don't tell teacher.

[ChiO]

Aren't you the maple syrup. (Shhhh...where do you think I get ideas for my classes? It's homage, not theft, I swear. But keep it under your projector. Shhhh....)

[ChiO]

It's best to start at the beginning, so we did with NOT WANTED (1949), Lupino's debut as a director. It is an easy one to miss because the sole directing screen credit goes to Elmer Clifton, who had a heart attack three days into the shoot, whereupon co-screenplay writer Lupino took over, and the Clifton movies that are most likely to be remembered today include GAMBLING WITH SOULS (1936 - prostitution), ASSASSIN OF YOUTH (1937 - marijuana), SLAVES IN BONDAGE (1937 - prostitution) and YOUTH AFLAME (1944 - JDs) rather than his many Western programmers. I think this latter point is an important connection.

Opening with a glazed-eyed young woman carrying off an infant from his baby buggy, and her immediate arrest and detention for kidnapping, the story is told by her from her cell cot in an extended flashback. Nineteen year old Sally (Sally Forrest - a near double of Lupino), an innocent with a suffocating mother, is smitten with Steve (Leo Penn - Sean's father and blacklistee), a nightclub pianist with (we later learn) a goal of becoming a popular arranger and classical composer. On his last night before moving on to Capitol City, they spend the night together. She decides to leave home and follow him, meeting Drew (Keefe Brasselle), an aw-shucks WWII vet with a prosthetic leg and a gas station, on the bus. He's smitten with her and sets her up at a rooming house and a job at the gas station. When Sally pops in on Steve, he is not amused. Disappointed, she leans on Drew, but curtails his desire to date her. As Steve is about to move on, she breaks the news that she's pregnant and he rejects marriage and her (I didn't lie to you. I didn't promise you anything. I have to make it alone. (paraphrased)). She moves to a hospital for unwed mothers in another town. Drew tracks her down by address, but leaves without seeing her when he discovers what the circumstances are. Sally gives birth (a caesarean delivery is graphically shown via color documentary footage) and gives up her son for adoption. When she returns to the hospital seeking, unsuccessfully, to regain her son, an administrator calls Drew to see if he can come to be supportive. The opening scene is replayed and the flashback ends. The parents of the kidnapped child forgive Sally given her unfortunate circumstances. As Sally leaves the police station, she sees Drew, she runs away and he tries to catch her (slowed, of course, by his prosthetic leg). She almost throws herself off of a bridge onto the path of an oncoming train, but continues to run. When she gets to another train overpass, Drew falls, can't get up, and beats his fists in frustration. Seeing that, Sally turns, goes to him, and cradles him in her arms.

A few of the discussion points:

1. Long airing of views of what Lupino was trying to do with the juxtaposition of styles, i.e. the insertion of the documentary footage. My unsubstantiated hypothesis: Given the subject matter (out-of-wedlock pregnancy), the historic context (late-40s), and Clifton's resume, the pre-production movie was sold to the distributor (Film Classics) as a Social Problem movie ripe to be exploited. Upon seeing a sensitive, nonjudgmental, evocative woman's melodrama, the suits said, "What the @(*&$*&%^#" and the BIRTH OF A BABY- and MOM AND DAD-type footage was added. The insertion also provides a cautionary aspect ("See what happens when you have pre-marital sex!") to a film that otherwise does not punish anyone in a traditional sense -- nobody dies, catches a horrible disease, ends up on Skid Row, or suffers eternal damnation.

2. A beautiful echo -- One long scene has Drew showing off his huge model train (Calling Dr. Freud!) to Sally. This reinforces a view of his child-like disposition despite his loss of a leg in WWII, and still exhibit some control (the train does what he tells it to, and he can repair it when necessary). In the climatic chase scene, trains are always within earshot and often visible. And a train whizzes by as Drew collapses and Sally realizes that he is both one who cares for her and can be cared for by her (a man replacing Steve and a child replacing her son).

3. Titles -- NOT WANTED carries many possibilities: unwanted pregnancy, rejection of Sally by Steve, rejection of Drew by Sally, Drew's rejection of Sally at the hospital, Sally's sense of herself. The alternate title (on re-release, I think) is THE WRONG RUT. Implications: (a) all Life is a rut, and Sally just chose the wrong one, vs. (b) "rut" is a euphemism for sexual congress, and Sally just chose the wrong one to do it with.

4. Nice lighting touch -- Usually when there is a closeup of Sally when she's with Steve, a part of her face is in shadow, showing both her possible internal struggle with whether he's the right man, and foreshadowing the difficulty her relationship with him will bring.

5. All of the characters are portrayed in a sympathetic way, including Steve. Although he is not going to be with Sally, we have to take his word for it that he in no way tricked her or promised any long-term relationship (we see no evidence of malevolence, and Sally does not challenge him on it). The possible exception is Sally's mother, but even she is shown to be caring (just overly strict and stern in language and behavior).

To be continued: Whether Lupino has a consistent style and whether she should rightly be considered an auteur.

[ChiO]

Sally Forrest and Keefe Brasselle return in Lupino's second directing effort, and first director's credit, NEVER FEAR (1949). Brasselle and Forrest are dance partners, and sweethearts, trying to make it to the top. Forrest contracts polio. Her father and Brasselle place her in a fine institution for rehabilitation, but she wavers between the making difficult struggle and giving up. Brasselle encourages her, stops dancing to get a job to earn a nest egg, with plans to return to dancing with her. She rejects his plans, which include marriage. She starts to turn toward another resident of the institution, Hugh O'Brien, and, though he's flattered and has some interest, he rejects her. Finally, she has no further need for a wheelchair or crutches, only a cane, and she is released. Bewildered by the people on the street walking and ignoring her presence, she is torn between moving forward and returning to the institution. But Brasselle is there waiting for her and they embrace...as she drops her cane.

The parallels with NOT WANTED are everywhere: a woman with an affliction (unwed pregnancy vs. polio), put into an institution (surrounded by others with the same affliction) where presumably she won't remain, no villains, and a woman who lacks agency. Even more than in NOT WANTED, her decisions are really made by men; she merely reacts: Brasselle is the lead partner, choreographer, costume designer, and booker; Brasselle and her father place her in the institution with no input from her; her rehabilitation is effectively forced on her by her male doctor; her coming out of her shell in the institution is due to O'Brien's insistence that she attend the institution's wheelchair square dance. She is in constant need of support (in order): relying on her dance partner, clutching stage ropes upon the onset of polio, using a wheelchair, using crutches, using a cane and, when she drops the case, being held up by Brasselle.

No real sense of camera style is yet evident, but there are two staggering shots. (1) She attempts, while alone in her room, to walk. She falls and pounds the floor with her fists as the lighting comes through the venetian blinds, making it appear that she is beating against prison bars. (2) Brasselle and Forrest are in a secluded room in the institution. In the background, there is a large statue of Pan -- a symbol of eroticism -- casting a shadow over the room while Brasselle asks her "to be a woman" and as he is filmed so that it appears that Pan's horns are emerging from his head. Jump cut: Forrest stares at the busts of a man and a woman she has made in art class...and she mutilates the woman.

[ChiO]

Interestingly enough (or not), Forrest does bear a resemblance to Lupino and, according to the instructor, Lupino purposefully cast her for that reason. Also, Lupino contracted a mild case of polio as a child.

Reportedly Lupino once said: I started as the poor man's Jean Harlow. Then I became the poor man's Bette Davis. Now I'm the poor man's Don Siegel.

Next week, with OUTRAGE (1950), she really comes into her own.

[CineMaven]

I sat in a beer garden in Brooklyn yesterday, sipping on this very Mojito -------> settling in to read your write-up on Ida Lupino, Director. Detailed, humorous, risque, compared & contrasted. Good solid, nicely written. I enjoyed the read. And the Mojito wasn't bad either. I'm already a fan of hers as an actress. Let's see if she has an eye.

[ChiO]

Thank you, KR and CM, for your kind words.

Class may be dismissed this Monday. Facets, at 7 p.m. on Monday, in the aftermath of the killings in Aurora, is hosting a round-table discussion on violence in film. The class is at Facets on Monday at 7 p.m. And in one of Life's paradoxes, the scheduled film for the class is OUTRAGE, a movie exploring how a woman and her community deal with her being sexually assaulted.

[ChiO]

OUTRAGE (1950) is a great leap forward -- Lupino's confidence in her skills is evident throughout the movie.

Ann (Mala Powers in her first leading role) is the happiest gal in the land because her long-time beau, Jim (Robert Clarke), has asked for her hand in marriage, and her parents approve. Leaving work late one night, she is raped by the food truck vendor whose stand she eats at most days. Traumatized, she rejects her fiancee's demands that they still marry and interprets every glance, touch and chat toward her as a criticism of her. She gets on a bus to L.A. Leaving the bus in the middle of nowhere when she thinks she'll be discovered, she passes out on a country road. Ann is rescued by Rev. Bruce "Doc" Ferguson (Tod Andrews), a single middle aged saintly sort, who gets her a room with the Waltons and a job at the Walton's packing plant. She and Doc grow closer. At a community picnic and dance, a plant worker (Jerry Paris) put the move on her, she relives her rape, clubs him with a wrench, and runs away...to a secluded spot she has shared with Doc. Doc finds her there, takes her back to the community, discovers her past, gets her the help she needs, and convinces the prosecutor and judge to drop the assault charge against her because "this world has created neuroses." Doc tells her that her parents want her back and Jim still wants to marry her. He puts her on a bus to go home, then looks to the sky and says, "Thank you."

That's the synopsis, but the camera is telling us much more. The rape sequence: Ann leaves work at night, whistling merrily. When she senses she's being stalked, she stops whistling and starts walking faster, then running, and trying to hide in an alley and behind trucks. In an homage to M, the stalker whistles (to try to get her to see it's a friendly face, or to stop her for the rape? There are no aural clues because there is no music.). We see parts of her, running left to right, through slats on the trucks. She falls and the rapist is upon her...but as soon as she sees him, there is a cut to her walking home, disheveled and wobbly. The scene seems to take forever, and tension mounts throughout. When she is hit upon later, Lupino replays the rape sequence in reverse. It's daylight in the country, not night in the city. We see the worker's advances. She falls to the ground. We see her re-living the rape. She clubs him and runs, in bright sunshine, right to left, and we see parts of her through slats in a fence.

Recurring themes and motifs: A young woman whose life is shattered by a single event. Dance as a normalizing activity. Her negative (saddened) reaction to other people after the shattering event. A woman who is reactive rather than being an agent of her own, with men -- even with good intentions -- who end up being the controlling factors in her actions. A man who cares for her who is good, disabled in his own way and, in effect, asexual (NOT WANTED - bum leg and sexually reticent; NEVER FEAR -- wheelchair bound and suppresses his desire). Here, Doc has only one lung due to a war injury, which is the basis for not putting tobacco in his pipe (or, as Herr Doktor Freud might say, the pipe is a phallic symbol and sans tobacco = impotence) and, though he clearly yearns for her, he behaves with gallantry bordering on prudishness. His look to the sky is thanking God for removing temptation. And, as with NEVER FEAR, there is some ambiguity to the ending that creates the possibility that it is a false happy ending a la Sirk. Will she complete this bus ride and go home? And, if so, will her life really be different and better?

[Robert Regan]

Thank you, ChiO, for sharing this class and your thoughts on Lupino, brilliant on both sides of the camera. A poor man's Don Siegel? Not hardly!

[ChiO]

Double-feature last night of HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL (1951) and THE HITCH-HIKER (1953), so there was no time for discussion, but I hope time is available next week because these two films are loaded with discussion points.

On the surface it is difficult to think of two more disparate movies -- a young woman's meteoric rise in amateur tennis, and two men terrorized by a psychopath -- from one director to link in an evening, but seeing them back-to-back shows several connections. One is a film noir disguised as a domestic melodrama and the other is a domestic melodrama disguised as a film noir.

HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL, a reference to Sally Forrest's tennis stroke and her future, is as sexually charged and gender bending as a Nicholas Ray movie. The undercurrent of the rivalry and jealousy Claire Trevor feels toward her daughter comes early when Forrest brings home a handsome young man of some status and Trevor's immediate reaction is to gussy herself up for him. Trevor's disdain for her husband is also evident early and intensifies throughout. Their bedroom scene -- two single beds with the headboards back-to-back, him talking about Forrest and her disinterestedly polishing her nails, culminating in a talon-like pose teasing, but not allowing, his touch -- is so discomforting as to be downright icky. Trevor is living through Forrest, raising a coded message of incest. As Forrest's career hits stride, her manager's* and her mother's involvement in that rise and with each other converts her father into a cuckold. And it's all about money, status and control...and a very thinly veiled allegory of women as a commodity and prostitution. As Forrest and Trevor live off of the perks and questionable money thrown at them, but carefully planned so Forrest maintains her amateur standing, and Forrest and her fella grow farther apart, he tells her that "he's not a boy like that."

It becomes the flip-side of the earlier Lupino movies. NOT WANTED (out-of-wedlock pregnancy), NEVER FEAR (polio) and OUTRAGE (rape) each has a young woman who must deal with an unexpected, negative life changing event for which she had made no plans and over which she had a perceived lack of control. HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL (note the change in tone of the titles), on the other hand, has a young woman with a life changing gift over which she has control -- but she loses control and tries to regain it. The issue of the woman's agency (or lack of it), however, remains a consistent theme. Although, like the three earlier films, the young woman does go to the good man in her life, here there is a greater sense that she has made that decision rather than others having made it for her. But it comes with a price...the destruction of her mother's life.

Although I kept thinking of JOHNNY GUITAR and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE while watching last night, upon reflection BIGGER THAN LIFE may be the better comparison with its voluntary use of a purportedly good outside agent that results in the destruction of the family. And HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL was ahead of them all.

* I try to restrain myself from re-casting movies, but as I watched this character I was screaming in my head: George Macready!

In spite its rural setting, largely occurring in daylight, and nary a fedora, upturned trench coat collar, raindrop or femme fatale to be found, it is safe to say that THE HITCH-HIKER (1953) is universally considered to be an example of film noir. How could it not be with RKO's go-to noir cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca (THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, OUT OF THE PAST, CLASH BY NIGHT), co-writer Daniel Mainwaring (OUT OF THE PAST, THE PHENIX CITY STORY, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) (he's uncredited, likely due to a conflict between his political views and Howard Hughes'), and stars Edmund O'Brien (THE KILLERS, WHITE HEAT, D.O.A.), Frank Lovejoy (IN A LONELY PLACE, I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI) and William Talman (THE WOMAN ON PIER 13, BIG HOUSE, U.S.A.). But I like to think that Lupino put her own stamp on things so that, like the other four films, it is a twisted domestic melodrama.

O'Brien and Lovejoy are two married men out for some bonding. Into their little family comes a virulent outside agent, Talman...a "real" man with a real gun that is always on display and used quite frequently (start dialing Herr Doktor Freud now). Lovejoy discloses that he has a child (potency). O'Brien does not. Lovejoy has a rifle -- a big gun -- and Talman orders him to shoot it...at O'Brien passively placing, then holding, the target. Talman orders O'Brien to put his arm around Lovejoy as they drive. Lovejoy remains calm, collected and logical throughout their capture while O'Brien gets intermittently hysterical. Lovejoy takes care of O'Brien when he gets hurt. Talman commands O'Brien to get undressed so that they can exchange clothes (yikes!). And, at the climax, it is Lovejoy who fights Talman over the gun and gets it out of his possession...and O'Brien slugs Talman in the face only after Talman is in handcuffs and being held by the police.

<Late editorial addition> William Talman's character...the epitome of "The Male Gaze"?

It's a family that has a disruptive third element introduced, which has its greatest impact on the surrogate woman of the group. That Lupino...one sly auteur.