Between 1949 and 1954, in addition to starring in seven films directed by others, Ida Lupino wrote and directed six features for Filmakers, the production company she founded along with her husband, Collier Young. In a recent article on Lupino in the Village Voice, Carrie Rickey writes, “Significantly, all the movies Lupino directed are about a marshmallow's emergence from passivity into action...‘problem' movies. The problems Lupino's characters face: rape, bigamy, polio, unwed motherhood, cop graft, mothers living vicariously through their daughters. Lupino's are unlike other American movies of their time. All made for less than $160,000, they are without stars, without studio (Lupino ironically recalls, ‘I suppose we were the New Wave at that time'), and, astonishingly, without liberal piety....”
In The Bigamist, a married travelling salesman (Edmond O'Brien) becomes involved with a waitress (Lupino) and, when she has his child, marries her out of a sense of propriety, thus embarking on a double life commuting between two marriages. The story, told in flashback, unfolds in Lupino's characteristically taut style, its mounting tension only exacerbated by her cutting observation of behavioral detail.