Helen

IDA LUPINO, Pioneer for Women Filmakers

THE WOMAN WITH THE CIGARETTE

It is fitting that both this year's Deauville Film festival and the French Cinémathèque are paying tribute to IDA LUPINO, the British-born actress-director-author and producer who spearheaded the entry of women into the male-dominated Hollywood filmmaking profession.

Her contributions as an actress and independent director are unmatched to this day.

Starting her cinema career in England, she was to the manner born, being the daughter of STANLEY LUPINO, an extremely popular musical entertainer and dance hall performer in the '30s.
He was so taken with her talent as a youngster that he actually constructed a model theatre for her to
act in with her young friends. By 13, she was already in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Tough, beautiful, perceptive, emphatic, stylish and brave, she stamped her films with her own particular vision, stearing away from the 'action' genre popular in the '40's to less explored social themes on the screen like unwed-pregnancy (NOT WANTED) 1949; rape : OUTRAGE (1950), family ambition and selfishness (HARD, FAST and BEAUTIFUL), marital cheating and a two-timing husband THE BIGAMIST (1953), a psycopath serial killer, unloved and neglected as a child by his parents THE HITCHHIKER (1953).

A strikingly attractive knockout as an actress, her heart-shaped face, curvaceous lips and wide, set-apart eyes, gave her a live 'Baby-Boop' ressemblance, the ultimate feminine and sexy cartoon figure in Max Fleischer's animations.

As a film Director, she explained : "I never planned to become a director. The fates and a combination
of luck -- good and bad -- were responsible." -- Ida Lupino, 1967.

Acting in several films in a disappointing string of minor roles in her early '20', usually cast as a hooker or femme-fatale, she eventually got fed-up one day and refused a role at WARNERS BROS' STUDIO in 1947 when she promptly ankled the company to work freelance as an actres so she could chose her own roles. But roles to her suiting did not crop up so she decided to move behind the camera and make her own movies.

Her big break came up when she replaced director Elmer Clifton who began shooting 'Not Wanted' in 1949 but suffered a heart attack 3 days into the works.

Although there were practically no female directors in the '40s and '50s, she went ahead to tackle revolutionary subjects that other producers steered clear of and quickly earned a repuation as an actor's director. With her second husband, screenwriter husband, Collier Young, she formed her own indie production company, appropriately called 'THE FILMAKERS', the banner under which she delved into psychological issues portraying with understanding, misfits, lost people, problem women and other outcasts and she turned the films into critical hard-selling hits the 50's.

It was her first six films over a period from 1949 to 1953 on low budgets, that best illustrated her emotional commitment and spleen showing everday American people with their predicaments in melodramatic intensity. Distant from Hollywood glamour, her characters waddled in self-doubts, weakness and victimization. They are traumatized, dominated or pressured by society to conform to traditional female standards of behaviour; each suffering heartbreak or loss in some form or other, but still plugging on in life and preservering. Other obvious themes are flight and displacement, loneliness and alienation.

After millionaire Howard Hughes subsequently bought out THE FILMAKERS company, box-office figures fell accordingly.

Her own particular emphatic vision of the weaker people in society shaped her movies, centering on principal characters who were stilted in their emotions and full of self-doubting preventing them from moving ahead. These 'problem movies' portrayed her human concern for the wounded, fragile and disappointed individuals. These "poor, bewildered people", she called them, concluding: "That is what we all are." .
Each of her film projects had them as her focal point.

Examples are the psycho-killer in THE HITCHHIKER, acted by William Talman, who expresses the neglect he felt as a child, upon admonishing the two men he hijacks to drive him to Mexico, as being 'softies',
when he says to them :"When I was born,they took one look at this puss o'mine and told me to get lost."

In HARD, FAST and BEAUTIFUL, a domineering mother of a young tennis champ, gets the following reproachment from her neglected husband, lying on his deathbed : "Everything you did was for yourself. You never gave love. You took it, and used it."

Her next film OUTRAGE, (1950) portrays a rape victim, who fights to overcome the trauma inflicted upon herself when she becomes the curious prey of the entire village.

In the film NEVER FEAR (1950), a young dancer in a duet with her fiancé is suddenly stricken with polio. She has to regain her self-esteem even though she may remain a cripple. Lupino herself suffered from the illness but miraculously recovered a few days later. Perhaps this insight gives the film, shot on location in a Santa Monica rehabilitation clinic, a documentary look and the details such a realistic impact in the emotional scenes of the young woman's anguish and trauma.

LUPINO's aim was "to do high quality, low-budget, independent films on provocative subjects and tell how
America lives." And those films she made from 1949 to 1953 are evidence that she achieved her goal successfully.

A complete artist, she always strove in her films to depict human nature in its complexity and diversity
and her work goes far beyond mere description or documentation to constitute a sort of genuine reporting.

The following quote expresses her deep and noble nature, open-minded and open-hearted :

"I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power...I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented
woman if the subject matter were right."

Among other plenty kudos, she was the second woman to be admitted to the Director's Guild.

Helen Dobrensky

helen@filmfestivals.com

• Login or register to post comments