Ida Lupino: Hard, Fast, and Beautiful

January 13–February 24, 2018

A talented actress turned groundbreaking director, Lupino left an indelible impression on cinema from both sides of the camera.

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High Sierra
The Bigamist
Moontide
They Drive by Night
The Hitch-Hiker

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Films
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Past Films

On Dangerous Ground
- Saturday, February 24 8:30 PM
Nicholas Ray
United States, 1951
On a rural manhunt, brutal urban cop Robert Ryan has his eyes opened by blind Ida Lupino in Nicholas Ray’s eloquent, brooding noir. Bernard Herrmann provides the score.
The Bigamist
- Saturday, February 17 8 PM
Ida Lupino
United States, 1953
Archival Print

A salesman commutes between two wives, two classes, and two cities—San Francisco and Los Angeles—in Lupino’s drama of married life and moral tension. Edmond O’Brien, Joan Fontaine, and Lupino star.
Hard, Fast and Beautiful
- Sunday, February 11 7 PM
Ida Lupino
United States, 1951
Archival Print

Lupino’s taut tennis drama depicts the complexities and limits of female ambition in postwar suburban America and offers an early exposé of corruption in amateur sports.
The Hitch-Hiker
- Saturday, February 10 8 PM
Ida Lupino
United States, 1953
Archival Print

Two fishing buddies pick up a hitchhiker on their way to Baja, with potentially deadly results, in Lupino’s high-tension thriller. Photographed by the great noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca.
Never Fear
- Saturday, January 27 4 PM
Ida Lupino
United States, 1949
Archival Print

A young dancer finds her promising career threatened by polio in Lupino’s first fully credited directorial effort, a blend of steadfastly un-melodramatic melodrama with the gritty aesthetics of docu-noir.
High Sierra
- Sunday, January 21 4 PM
Raoul Walsh
United States, 1941
High Sierra ushered in the era of the gangster as existential antihero, with Humphrey Bogart as a wanted man hiding out in the Sierras and Ida Lupino as the cabaret singer who loves him.
Outrage
- Saturday, January 20 8 PM
Ida Lupino
United States, 1950
Imported Archival Print

Few Hollywood films address the aftereffects of rape like Lupino’s powerful work, which tracks one brutalized woman’s difficult steps towards recovery. “One of the crucial movies of the era, Outrage looks intimately, painfully, and analytically at what we now know to call rape culture” (New Yorker).
Moontide
- Sunday, January 14 7 PM
Archie Mayo, Fritz Lang
United States, 1942
4K Digital Restoration

A luminous Ida Lupino stars as a distraught woman saved from suicide by a hard-drinking longshoreman (the great French actor Jean Gabin in his American debut) in Fritz Lang and Archie Mayo’s atmospheric thriller-cum–fairy tale.
They Drive by Night
- Saturday, January 13 8 PM
Raoul Walsh
United States, 1940
An atmospheric tale of long-haul truckers (Humphrey Bogart and George Raft) during the Great Depression. Ida Lupino’s performance as the ambitious, frustrated wife of the boss made her a star overnight.

Ida Lupino: Hard, Fast, and Beautiful

January 13–February 24, 2018

Energetic, resourceful, and intelligent, Ida Lupino (1918–1995) left her indelible impression on cinema from both sides of the camera. Born to a lineage of performers dating back to the Renaissance, Lupino appeared in her first film at thirteen, and not long after decamped from the UK for Hollywood in 1933. There she garnered praise for portrayals of worldly and often unsympathetic characters. Lupino’s career gained traction with her move to Warner Bros. in 1940 and roles in They Drive by Night and High Sierra. Despite her success, Lupino was frustrated by the lack of interesting parts for women and the constraints of the studio system, where she was often suspended for refusing insignificant or demeaning roles. In 1947 she left Warner Bros., and as a free agent began writing, producing, and ultimately directing films in addition to acting.

In 1948 Lupino and her second husband, Collier Young, formed The Filmakers to produce films using a documentary style to depict ordinary people in difficult situations. Ingeniously working around the censorious Motion Picture Production Code, they sensitively portrayed such taboo topics as teenage pregnancy, polio, bigamy, rape, and kidnapping. Taking over the direction of their first production from the ailing Elmer Clifton, Lupino proved to be a skilled director. The low-budget feature was a success and provided a model for The Filmakers’ subsequent output. Pioneering independent filmmaking when the studios ruled the screen, Lupino’s productions were the “new wave” of their day. This series celebrates Lupino’s groundbreaking films alongside her scintillating on-screen presence.

Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator

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Thanks to Katie Dintelman, Criterion Pictures USA; Sam La France, TIFF Cinematheque; Anne Morra and Katie Trainor, Museum of Modern Art; Kristie Nakamura, Warner Bros. Classics; Todd Weiner and Steven Hill, UCLA Film & Television Archive; Lynanne Schweighofer, Library of Congress; and Hannah Prouse and George Watson, BFI.