Ida Lupino | Subjects | Rankings

Feature Films: The Hitch-Hiker | The Trouble With Angels

Have Gun - Will Travel: Charley Red Dog | The Day of the Bad Man

The Virginian: Deadeye Dick

Classic Film and Television Home Page (with many articles on directors) | Television Western Articles

Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino is an American film and television director.

Lupino is a great actress. She is a member of a theatrical family that dates back to the Renaissance, one that is centuries older than such famous modern dynasties as the Barrymores, the Macreadys, the Redgraves or the British family that includes Ellen Terry and Sir John Gielgud.

Ida Lupino: Subjects

Some common subjects in the films of Ida Lupino:

Subjects:

Links to culture, on a meta-level: Favorite performers:

Rankings

Here are ratings for various films directed by Ida Lupino. Everything at least **1/2 is recommended.

Feature films:

Screen Directors Playhouse: Have Gun - Will Travel: Gilligan's Island: The Virginian:

The Hitch-Hiker

Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker (1953) has some features in common with the semi-documentary films, and some differences. It has much realistic location photography, like them. It has a generally "realistic" tone, one that is almost documentary like. It follows a real geography, apparently, through Mexico, although I am not expert enough on Mexico to tell if it is fully non-fictional. It contains an elaborate depiction of a "realistic" police manhunt for its villain, a manhunt that makes up much of the plot of the film.

However there are some differences as well. The police in the film, while sympathetic, are not the central characters in the movie. Instead, the protagonists are two ordinary guys who happen to pick up the vicious hitchhiking criminal of the title. These guys never become any sort of heroes in the traditional macho sense. The bad guy has a gun on them, and they just have to do what he says throughout the film. In fact, some of the film's viewers get mad that they never fight the bad guy or stand up to him. This film of Lupino's is the only film noir ever directed by a woman, and perhaps she is exposing the myths of male heroism here. After all, what can these guys do? The film is quite realistic in this depiction, but it is clearly violating traditional filmic depictions of heroic protagonists. However, the heroes of the film are not bad guys either. The film is careful not to suggest that they in any way deserve what is happening to them. The film seems to suggest that we should root for them to try to survive. They are Everymen, and their typicality makes us identify with them.

The film has remarkable outdoor landscapes of Mexico. Filmed on location, they are visually striking. They form much of the mise-en-scène of the film.

The Trouble With Angels

When I was a kid, I loved Lupino's comedy The Trouble With Angels (1966). This film was most unusual at the time in that it was made entirely by women. In addition to Lupino as a director, it had a woman scriptwriter, Blanche Hanalis, and a nearly all woman cast, taking place at a convent school for girls. I remember how excited my Mother was when this came out, to see a film made by women, and she took us kids to see it immediately. Today's women rarely seem interested in films by women directors - I wonder why?

Have Gun - Will Travel: Charley Red Dog

Charley Red Dog (1959) stars a young Native American who has dreams - or are they fantasies - about becoming the US Marshal of a tough Western town. In part it is a serious, sympathetic study of a minority man facing up to racial prejudice; in part it is one of Lupino's comic tales of Western lore intersecting with reality. In this case, the dream of being a Marshal is contrasted with the reality of this squalid town. The mixture of serious and comic-fantastical elements gives Charley Red Dog an unusual feel. It also keeps the audience in suspense: how is this strange story going to turn out?

Charley Red Dog recalls a comic book series: Pow-Wow Smith, Indian Lawman. This ran in first Detective Comics, then Western Comics (1949-1961). It was well-established long before Charley Red Dog. Pow-Wow Smith is a Sioux who is the highly respected Sheriff of a frontier town. The stories are serious, not comic. They show the job and social position to which the hero of Charley Red Dog is aspiring.

Have Gun - Will Travel: The Day of the Bad Man

The Day of the Bad Man (1960) is a comedy, about a young teacher who is masquerading as a gunman out West. It has a complexly plotted story. It is another Lupino work about Western mythology intersecting with a very different reality.

The Day of the Bad Man recalls a comic book series: Johnny Thunder (1948-1961). This ran in comic books from the same publisher as those containing the "Pow-Wow Smith, Indian Lawman" tales that relate to Lupino's Charley Red Dog. Johnny Thunder was a highly principled schoolteacher out West, who also masqueraded as his secret identity of a gunslinger-on-the-side-of-right known as "Johnny Thunder". His two identities led to philosophical musings on the role of teaching versus violence in the building up of the West. The Day of the Bad Man also examines such issues.

Teaching is a Lupino subject. It returns in the school setting of The Trouble With Angels. She views teaching with respect.

The Virginian: Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick (1966) is a comic Western. It is the only episode of The Virginian directed by Lupino.

Deadeye Dick recalls subjects from The Day of the Bad Man. Both films show cliches from Western fiction being comically intermixed with reality. There is a Pirandellian effect, of fiction merging with real life, and forming an alternate, co-existing layer.

Both films show Western tough guys, trying to aid likable young men with no Western skills, and turn them into seeming Western heroes. The illusion works in The Day of the Bad Man, fails comically in Deadeye Dick. Both men helped are young, genuinely nice, and good marriage material in their "real" lives. They simply lack the glamour of dime novel Western heroes. The two men have real life professions: teacher in The Day of the Bad Man, law student in Deadeye Dick. The episodes do not attack Western ideals, however: they merely show that "real life" alternatives are valid, too.

Deadeye Dick has a double focus for its Western fantasies vs. reality: both the Virginian and the young man. It differs from The Day of the Bad Man, which looked at a single fake gunslinger.

Deadeye Dick stars a young woman, decent and sincere, trying to find her way to adulthood. This echoes the emphasis on young women characters in some of Lupino's theatrical films.