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HIGH SIERRA, 1941

Actress, Producer, Director: Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was born into a London showbiz family in 1918 and first appeared on camera at the tender age of 13, going on to receive a five-year contract from Paramount just two years later. With the studio system having been subdued by the production code, Lupino initially had little opportunity to show off her talent, given her preference for playing sensual, somewhat crazy characters. It was only the rise of the film noir in the 40s which gifted her a series of classic roles, including the memorable femme fatales she created for Raoul Walsh in HIGH SIERRA and THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT. By industry standards, Lupino had reached the highpoint of her career.

Yet these glamorous leading roles and the film star fame that went along with them did not satisfy her artistic ambitions. In the second half of her career, which stretched from the late 40s to the late 60s, she dedicated herself primarily to producing and directing for both cinema and television. As a woman, she had to found her own company so as to be able to move from before the camera to behind it. Together with her husband Collier Young and screenwriter Malvin Wald, she produced nine films in quick succession from 1949 onwards under the banner of "The Filmmakers", five of which she directed herself. NEVER FEAR (1949) was the first Hollywood film since Dorothy Arzner's "First Comes Courage" (1943) for which a female director was responsible.

The difficult conditions women were (and continue to be) confronted with in the director's chair are reflected in The Filmmakers productions: They often focus on women who face considerable resistance, primarily from themselves, as they struggle to find their place in the world. The Filmmakers films are not, however, just largely forgotten classics of feminist cinema, but also outstanding examples of the new, independent B-films which had by the 1950s begun to supersede the classic Poverty Row productions. While many stuck to tried and tested genre formulas, Lupino took risks, shooting films about rape (OUTRAGE), sadism (THE HITCH-HIKER), and adultery (THE BIGAMIST). Anyone expecting the sort of sensational exposés that could easily lurk behind such titles will be surprised by the tender, deeply humanistic view that Lupino takes of her characters.

The film series is curated by Hannes Brühwiler and Lukas Foerster and connects both sections of Lupino's career, presenting five of her works as an actress and five as a director.

THE BIGAMIST (Ida Lupino, USA 1953, 2.7., with an introduction by Hannes Brühwiler & 9.7.) THE BIGAMIST is the only film in which Lupino directed herself. In her penultimate directional work for the cinema, she plays Phyllis Martin, a Los Angeles waitress. At first glance, this Phyllis Martin is just "the other woman" with whom travelling salesman Harry Graham falls in love, who actually lives with his wife and business partner Eve a few hundred miles north in San Francisco. But THE BIGAMIST is no speculative melodrama, but rather a heart-breaking, deeply humanistic film about three people with the best will in the world who despair of one another nonetheless.  

THE GAY DESPERADO (Rouben Mamoulian, USA 1936, 3. & 7.7.) A cinema full of Mexicans, the bandit Pablo Braganza among them, who is so taken by the American gangster flick he's watching that he spontaneously decides to modify his criminal machinations so they meet the standards of the Chicago bosses. As he also loves music, he kidnaps opera singer Chivo, who meets Jane (Ida Lupino) while in captivity, another of Braganza's victims. THE GAY DESPERADO is a film of comings and goings, whereby the characters are kidnapped, flee, fall in love – and then attempt to flee once again. Rouben Mamoulian's cinematic extravaganza is at once a satire on the then-nascent gangster film genre and an enjoyably hysterical musical comedy.

THE MAN I LOVE (Raoul Walsh, USA 1946, 2. & 19.7.) Singer Petey Brown (Ida Lupino) leaves New York to visit her sister on the West Coast and get some rest. But she doesn't manage to find calm there either; her family's problems, a dodgy nightclub owner, and San, a pianist she falls for, all generate additional anxiety. THE MAN I LOVE is a film that wanders between genres, its form in constant flux; at times a film noir, then a musical, and a romantic melodrama again and again.  

OUTRAGE (Ida Lupino, USA 1950, 5.7.) Lupino's perhaps most daring directorial work is dedicated to a subject largely too taboo even for the Hollywood cinema of today: protagonist Ann Walton (an impressive Mala Powers in her first film role) becomes the victim of a rape early in the film. The rest of OUTRAGE doesn’t explore the legal ramifications of this act of violence, but rather its psychological and interpersonal ones, an account of both the existential discomfiture of a young women injured to her very core and her cautious reconvalescence that remains shaky to the very end.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (Raoul Walsh, USA 1940, 6.7., with an introduction by Michael Baute & 9.7.) Lupino's finally achieved true superstar status in her second collaboration with Raoul Walsh. This truck driver drama is one of the most beautiful films about life (and death) on the road and a prime example of the sort of winding, rough-and-ready cinema on the move for which American film critic Manny Farber coined the term "termite cinema", even if "the film resists any sort of classification, any sort of genre" (Bernard Eisenschitz). It's about two truckers (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) and two women: Ann Sheridan plays the all-American girl, Lupino the femme fatale. And what a femme fatale! Her ice-cold psychopathic killer gaze is more than a match for even the full force of a twelve-tonner.

NEVER FEAR (Ida Lupino, USA 1949, 17. & 26.7.) After giving directorial billing for "Not Wanted" to B-movie veteran Elmor Clifton despite having directed nearly the entire film herself, Lupino took on full responsibility for NEVER FEAR in the opening credits too. Sally Forrest, a Lupino discovery, plays Carol Williams, a young dancer who contracts polio. The film is dedicated first and foremast to her slow, difficult reconvalescence: the physiological rehabilitation measures, portrayed with almost documentary precision, but also the mental crisis she must overcome in order to find a place in her own life once again. NEVER FEAR is an attentive film in the best possible sense, with a keen eye for the small moments of tenderness and cruelty in how people interact on a day-to-day basis. 

HIGH SIERRA (Raoul Walsh, USA 1941, 4. & 25.7.) Infamous bank robber Roy Earle used to be a big shot, but feels like the whole world is against him after being freed from prison. Young gangsters look at him with mistrust and the majestic mountain landscape of the High Sierra turns out to be a narrow as the urban canyons in the big city. Following THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT,HIGH SIERRA is another collaboration between Raoul Walsh, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart and a film noir classic. Walsh tells HIGH SIERRA as a frank story about people trying to realize their dreams. While secondary characters may indeed get lucky, Lupino and Bogart do not. Their fate is inescapable, which both characters seem to know from the very start  – as does the viewer.

PRIVATE HELL 36 (Don Siegel, USA 1954, 21. & 27.7.) Lupino dominates this jaded, late-period noir, not just as a leading actress, but also as a producer, in a film full of hugely damaged people who quickly lose their footing on morally precipitous ground. Lupino plays cynical nightclub singer Lilli Marlowe, a melancholy variation on her femme fatale roles of the 40s, with the emphasis on dark romantics having given way to pure financial greed. It's also thanks to Don Siegel’s typically economical directing style that the story surrounding Marlowe and two corrupt policeman develops an irresistible pull.

THE HITCH-HIKER (Ida Lupino, USA 1953, 22. & 30.7.) Two friends take a hitch-hiker with them on their way. He reveals himself, however, to be an unparalleled sadist being hunted by the police and attempts to escape by forcing the two hobby fishermen to help him. THE HITCH-HIKER is probably the most well known of the films directed by Ida Lupino. A film noir as masterful as it is harsh which finds an uncanny echo in the gaze of the killer, who even keeps one eye open when asleep. Yet Lupino also shows little interest in the more sensational aspects of the story, which is based on a real-life case.  

HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL (Ida Lupino, USA 1951, 24. & 28.7.) Outside of the films she made with Lupino, Sally Forrest was unable to forge a major career. She did, however, create three memorable leading characters for her mentor and the woman who discovered her. In HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL, the last of the three, she plays a young tennis player named Florence. While she has talent in spades, it is her mother Millie (Claire Trevor) who harbors the greatest ambitions, who wants to make Florence into a sporting superstar regardless of the cost. In the end, HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL proves to be less of a sports film than the story of an emancipation. "It's astounding what career woman Lupino finds interesting about her protagonist: not that she must fight hard to reach the top, but that she must learn to resist, or even to deny herself." (Michael Kienzl) (hb/lf)With thanks to the Filmpodium Zürich.

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media