Directed By Women: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

By Andrea Thompson

Since the last two films in this column have been all about the new kids on the block, this week’s column features a throwback, a movie that’s every bit as lean and mean as its intro promises.

No, Ida Lupino’s slim, 70 minute 1953 thriller “The Hitch-Hiker” isn’t technically horror, but rather a noir. It takes place south of the border, and while we don’t travel the world and see its wonders, the cruelty of men, or more accurately, one man, is on full display, and that’s plenty.

The movie was inspired by the real life story of Billy Cook’s murder spree, which Lupino apparently had to soften to satisfy censors. But her introduction of the sociopathic Emmett Myers (William Talman) is nonetheless weighted with menace, with Myers coming off as demented as any slasher villain.

Like many of the best monsters, “The Hitch-Hiker” shrouds its killer with an air of mystery, only showing the lower portion of Myers’s body as he unrepentantly shoots those who have the bad fortune to offer him a ride before Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) unwittingly kick off their own nightmarish odyssey by inviting him into their car. Face enshrouded in shadow in the backseat, Myers quickly reveals himself, producing a gun and issuing orders clearly borne of a long history of brutally using and disposing of people as he sees fit.

Collins and Bowen are everymen who share a long history of friendship, and much of the movie’s suspense, and Myers’s sadism, is borne of the fact that the two refuse to abandon each other. Each pit stop, from a gas station to a store where they stop to grab necessary supplies, we all hold our breath for that false move that could mean the end of every innocent person the trio happens to come across.

Because make no mistake, Myers is so human that his character lends itself to the many ways he seems inhuman. His vigilance, the gleeful ways he psychologically tortures Collins and Bowen, the tattered pieces of his backstory - all of it confirms that this is a tortured man who is beyond redemption. Myers views the care his captives show for each other as soft, nothing more, and his guiding philosophy is that since no one gave him anything, he owes nothing to any human being, least of all mercy.

But the most chilling thing of all is his and the movie’s lack of pretense. Myers makes plain that he plans to kill the duo once they’re no longer useful, and as they make their way through the Mexican countryside, whether or not the radio reports the police tracking their progress, the discovery of a wedding ring, could mean the difference between an extra few hours of life. They are also completely unable to tell when they can make a break for it, since one of Myers’s eyes refuses to close all the way.

It’s very likely Lupino also felt like she had something to prove. In a time when female directors were nearly nonexistent, she had a number of women’s pictures under her directorial belt, including “Outrage,” which in 1950 was one of the first films to deal with the subject of rape, before turning her attention to a thriller. And that was only due to the fact that the film’s original male director fell ill and was unable to finish filming.

Clearly the film didn’t suffer for it. It remains a classic, well worth the investment of its relatively paltry $100,000 budget, still earning praise for how gleefully we root for the noose to tighten around the Myers’s neck. Unsentimental, unsparing, and utterly exhausting once the climax finally puts an end to a very American brand of senseless violence, it remains one of Lupino’s finest works in a long career that nevertheless should’ve seen far more.

52 Films By Women: Winter's Bone (2010)

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By Andrea Thompson

Life-changing is a cliché I hesitate to use, but that was certainly my experience when I saw “Winter's Bone” in theaters in 2010. I remember being in awe, not just of the film's magnificent characters, none of whom came off as stereotypical, but the actors who brought them to life with a tenderness that was in stark contrast to the harsh Ozark setting that director Debra Granik depicted with such quiet, unflinching intensity.

And of course, it gave us the one actress who came to rule them all, Jennifer Lawrence. It was how I and so many others were introduced to her, and there's a reason her performance as 17-year-old Ree was universally praised. I left the theater enraptured, and soon returned three more times to relive Ree's grueling ordeal to keep her family home and land. Lawrence was clearly a young woman who was going places, and I couldn't get enough.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was also the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Debra Granik. At least it hasn't faded yet, with her subsequent films “Stray Dog” and “Leave No Trace” becoming favorites of mine, even if they didn't have quite the same impact as “Winter's Bone.” Apparently I'm not alone in that, since practically everyone who reviewed “Leave No Trace” couldn't help but compare teenage lead Thomasin McKenzie to Lawrence, even though their characters take wildly divergent paths in coming into their own.

As someone who also grew up in a rural environment who would regularly hear about meth houses exploding, Ree's journey resonated with me. It's why I return to “Winter's Bone” again and again, but have yet to watch a single episode of “Breaking Bad.” Granik gave us a vision of meth underworld filled with people who destitute, who were both victims and villains, sans moralization or glorification. Maybe it was just relief that someone, somewhere, knew, and responded with compassion.

It was also a deeply feminist world enmeshed right in the midst of a brutal patriarchy that supposedly prized family but disposed of it with casual, brutal efficiency. The teenage Ree is her family's caregiver, not just for her younger brother and sister, but her mother, who has mentally deteriorated due to the daily stress she was ill-equipped to cope with. When Ree is informed that her missing father put up the house and land for his bond, she is the only one capable of searching for him in order to prevent them all from becoming homeless as well as destitute.

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Ree's uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes, who in many ways embodies the traditional tortured noir hero) may eventually become her staunch ally, but it is the other women with whom Ree has more complex relationships, whether it's as a source of sanity, as is the case with her friend Gail (Lauren Sweetser), tenuous allies, or at times, her victimizers and reluctant saviors, such as the Milton women who aid their male relatives in ensuring their meth activities remain an open secret in their community.

Ree is also allowed to have her limits, and be emotionally vulnerable as well as physically. She's almost unbelievably strong, but even she has her limits in a place and time where any triumph means holding onto a status quo that threatens to violently rip apart at any moment. The last shot of the film, where Ree knows her happy ending isn't escape but right back where she started, is the ultimate bittersweet moment.

52 Films By Women: Strange Days (1995)

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By Andrea Thompson

Some filmmakers, even the well-known ones, are full of surprises. Take Kathryn Bigelow, who has been directing for decades, but is mostly known for her later work, such as “The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “Detroit.” I've already covered another of her lesser-known films, “Near Dark,” but “Strange Days” is even more unfamiliar. It's also most likely the most ambitious film Bigelow has ever made.

It has a few things in common with with “Near Dark” in that it's a blending of genres, although “Strange Days” was such a flop it nearly ended Bigelow's career. Where “Near Dark” was a masterpiece which blended the vampire movie with the western, “Strange Days” is even more unusual, a sci-fi neo-noir which takes place in a bleakly dystopian 1999 Los Angeles, a mere four years after the film was made in 1995.

In Bigelow's vision, the riots which the city apart in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict never really ceased, but became a pattern of violent social unrest, transforming Los Angeles into a war zone. Not that it seems to really bother Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), a dealer who feeds on the disillusionment of the populace to sell his very illegal wares, which is where “Strange Days” really gets prescient. People can fit themselves with recording devices they attach to their head, which allows them to record not only their experiences, but their emotions and sensations. The resulting videos, which can range from pornography to, in one case, a robbery, are in high demand, and Lenny is happy to provide them to his customers. For a hefty fee of course.

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Lenny is also an ex-cop and an addict of the drugs he’s peddling, frequently retreating into footage of his past relationship with singer Faith Justin (Juliette Lewis), who has long since left him for sleazy music industry mogul Philo (Michael Wincott). Lenny doesn't need much of an excuse to want to get Faith away from her new beau, but he has more reason than usual after Faith's former friend Iris (Brigitte Bako) comes to Lenny with a desperate plea for help. Faith is clearly caught up in something, but insists to Lenny that their relationship is over and she doesn't need rescuing. Lenny thinks otherwise, and when he receives a recording of Iris being raped and murdered, he decides to dig deeper.

From a modern perspective, much of the recordings in “Strange Days” look like either YouTube videos or first-person shooters. And much like today, the fact that so many people have recording devices meant that people who were previously deprived of a voice could hold the powerful accountable. Race isn't often addressed in noir or sci-fi, but it's one of the central themes of “Strange Days,” as much of the unrest springs from inequality, specifically a system that dehumanizes much of its citizenry.

Even if most of the characters are white, the concerns of black people and the racism they face is what fuels “Strange Days.” But they're really embodied in Angela Bassett's badass performance as Mace, a limo driver who also becomes Lenny's bodyguard throughout their investigation. She and Lenny met when he was still a cop, the day Mace's former partner was arrested for dealing, and she found her son in his room with Lenny, who effectively shielded him from the trauma of watching his father get carted off to jail. But where Lenny encountered heartbreak and only made himself more vulnerable, Mace responded to her difficulties by making herself stronger. This is a pattern that repeats throughout the film, with Lenny often depicted as vulnerable, while Mace is the one who repeatedly fights off both her and Lenny's attackers, even if they often just barely escape with their lives.

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What their pursuers are willing to kill for turns out to be footage of two police officers murdering the Tupac-esque rapper Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) at a random traffic stop. Mace wants to release the footage to the media, but as several characters point out, such an action could make their already turbulent city explode into an orgy of violence. It's an excellent point, but this environment, which is an almost laughably Mad Max vision of a city on the verge of the apocalypse. is also what makes “Strange Days” so cringey at some points. It's a 90s vision of edginess, with music that would barely appeal in its own decade, what with its annoying combination of the era's grunge, rock, and punk aesthetic. People just thought they were so dark and edgy in the 90s.

That's about the only part of the film which really feels dated, as the movie's flaws are more than compensated by the absolutely terrific performances and Bigelow's skillful direction. Ralph Fiennes has flexed his comedic muscles in films such as “Hail Caesar!” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” but he's mostly become known for his more serious work. In “Strange Days,” Fiennes is hilariously appealing as the weaselly, yet charming Lenny, and we have no problem rooting for him. And while Bassett is incredible in her supporting role as the film's moral center who isn't willing to compromise her ideals and bargain away a tape that could change things, Juliette Lewis might just be the one who accomplishes the most. Faith could've easily been another objectified damsel, but Lewis gives her real heart as a woman so desperate to sate her desires that she's willing to put her life and sanity in the hands of a man who's as paranoid as he is abusive, only realizing the true gravity of her situation until it's too late for her to escape unscathed.

It's really Bigelow, however, who makes all the difference. “Strange Days” features quite a few recordings that feature violence, rape, and murder, but she never glorifies the horrors on display. During the robbery, we share in every bit of the victims' fear as armed men burst in on them with guns, then the horror and panic as thing going south. Crucially, the rape scenes are brutal, but not graphic. We feel the pain of the women who are not only violated, but also made to see what their attacker sees, in essence witnessing their own assault and murder through his eyes.

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With so much unrelenting darkness, you'd think that the hope Bigelow offers at the end would feel hollow. But she surprisingly makes a damn good case that maybe, just maybe, things could be different in the new millennium. After so much brutality, the year 2000 actually kicks off with a high-ranking law enforcement official doing the right thing, a black woman being believed, and the police actually serving and protecting. Even if it feels like we've regressed in many ways, at least we seem to be confronting the many themes “Strange Days” addressed far before #MeToo, Time's Up, and Black Lives Matter forced such difficult discussions into the mainstream.

52 Films By Women: Death is a Caress (1949)

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By Andrea Thompson

It's still Noirvember, and I wanted to mark the occasion with another noir film directed by a woman. Having discussed Ida Lupino's “Outrage” last week, my options were predictably limited. Lupino was practically the only female director working in Hollywood at the time, and breaking it down by the genre made pickings far slimmer if I wanted to focus on a film by a different director.

But bless this wonderful age we live in, where there's always something somewhere that will reference the more obscure titles even some of the most devoted cinephiles haven't heard of. That, in short, is how I came across “Death is a Caress.” Made in 1949, it was apparently the first Norwegian film directed by a woman, and it upends many of the typical noir staples.

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The film is narrated via flashback, beginning as a police vehicle drives through the streets. Ah siren, siren, what crime brings you forth? This is how we meet Erik (Claus Wiese), the young man under arrest who proceeds to narrate the film via flashback to his lawyer. Before his troubles started, he was a successful mechanic who was engaged to a beautifully innocent, adoring young woman named Marit (Eva Bergh). In true noir fashion, the best you can say about her is that she's delightfully bland. During one of their interactions, the camera zooms in a lovely white ornament nearby, as if to dangle the possibility of a happy, pristine future that's not to be.

Needless to say, Sonja (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen ) fits neatly into the mold of the femme fatale from the minute she appears. She's not only married, she's older and in full possession of wealth all her own, having never needed a man to support her. She's beautiful, but it's in a different fashion than noir dames typically are, with the sheer force of her presence being a large component of the impression she makes. When she shows up, she strides right over to Erik and demands his attention on their first encounter, and nearly runs him over in the next.

As their seductive dance continues, Erik tries to resist it, take solace in Marit, and avoid Sonja, only to be drawn back to her more and more willingly. Even when he meets Sonja's oblivious husband, Erik and Sonja exchange the kind of knowing smirks and glances that can only mean one thing as their interactions become more and more charged, and Erik soon abandons Marit without looking back. When he and Sonja do finally consummate their mutual attraction, it's far more erotic due to the lack of interference from the Hays Code, even if it's far less graphic than the films of today.

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Surprisingly, Erik and Sonja's relationship soon incorporates love as well as lust, although Sonja has clearly formed similar liaisons previously. Sonja even promises Erik to divorce her husband and marry him. Even more shocking is that after an initial hesitation, Sonja actually follows through. But her and Erik's interactions have always been laced with harbingers of doom, and the problems start to arise as early as their honeymoon, and continue to grow throughout their relationship, which becomes more and more turbulent. Erik is somewhat resentful of Sonja's money and position, and she becomes more and more jealous and suspicious of him. Yet they always return to each other, until finally their mutually destructive impulses culminate in a horrifying climax.

This kind of toxic relationship is all too familiar, especially when it comes Erik's fatalistic mindset, which justifies his inability to take responsibility for his actions. He regrets what he's done, yet he believes it was inevitable, albeit in a more complex fashion than usual. As he puts it, things aren't decided in advance, but people have to follow their path, even if he allows that our choices are affected by our experiences. Granted, it's easy to trace the roots of this belief, since even Erik's boss remarks that they're one day closer to death at the end of the workday. Is all Nordic cinema obligated to somehow reference and/or grapple with death and existential angst in general?

Erik says he doesn't blame Sonja, but rather the class differences that kept them at odds. To the movie's credit, class itself is the source of much of the film's commentary on how many restrictions women face in their public and private lives, even when they seem to have a dizzying number of options. Yet at his sentencing, Erik seems determined to assign much of the blame to Sonja, not only claiming he never would've been a killer if he hadn't met her, but that Sonja actually participated in her own killing. He is unable to accept that he deserves to punished. And the system seems to partially agree, since Erik gets a mere five years for his crimes. Rather than vanishing, one could argue that this trope has merely evolved, with powerful women often being depicted as unstable at best, and still have a tendency to perish in the arms of the same men who profess their love for them.

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The movie's title becomes an indictment, unintentional or not, about how common this kind of brutality is, especially for the women who typically suffer the worst of the consequences. In every statistic, the rates for those who have experienced intimate partner violence are not only higher for women than men, but the CDC estimates that “nearly half of female homicide victims in the U.S. are killed by a current or former male intimate partner.” There's a lot of insight into a certain kind of toxicity that fuels many a vicious cycle. Like many co-dependent couples, the highs were dizzying, but the lows were also devastating.

As for Erik himself, his obsession with Sonja is still powerful enough that he seems perfectly capable of giving himself the life sentence his judges will not. By the end, sitting alone in the darkness of his cell while bathed in warm light from the nearby window, he first speaks into an unseen distance, then unsettlingly, directly to us as he says he still can't say he would've avoided her Sonja even if he knew how his time with her would end. He's still filled with a longing for not only her, but “a heaven or hell where they could meet again.”

52 Films By Women: Outrage (1950)

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By Andrea Thompson

If you want a female director to celebrate for #Noirvember, Ida Lupino is pretty much the go to. She wasn't just the main female director working at a time when noir films were at their height, she was pretty much the only one. And while her other films such as “The Hitch-Hiker” are far more well-known, it's the underseen “Outrage” that feels as disturbingly relevant now as when it was made in 1950.

Its beginning is a common one for noir, with a woman alternately staggering and running through a lonely street at night. She's clearly been through the ringer, and we immediately wonder what she's trying to escape. A pursuer? Is this the aftermath of a terrible crime? Or is she suffering from something more existential, like the past she thought she left behind? Is she a woman on the wrong side of the law, a player who got outplayed? Did she set a plan in motion that spun out of her control?

Turns out it's something simultaneously far simpler and complex. Ann Walton (Mala Powers) isn't a noir dame who walked into a bar with a plan and eye for her next mark. She's a happy, ordinary young woman with a loving fiance, Jim (Robert Clarke) a supportive, close-knit family, and a steady job with coworkers she likes and gets along with. Even the guy who serves food at the counter and frequently gives her attention she doesn't want doesn't disturb her. What “Outrage” does as it follows Ann's struggles is offer up a critique for something the film didn't have the words for, and were prevented from even naming, what we now call rape culture.

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Because that creepy counter guy that Ann barely notices follows her home one night when she's working late and rapes her. Not that the movie is allowed to say it, instead using using the word assault or attack to describe the horrifying sequence where Ann's unnamed rapist follows her throughout the dark, deserted streets as she desperately tries to call for help from various sources while attempting to evade him. When she collapses from running, the final tragic accident is a car horn which covers her implied screams, as well as a man who hears the horn but unable to see what is happening from his angle.

When Ann returns home disheveled, “Outrage” chooses empathy rather than revenge, as not only Ann but her family grapples with the aftermath of her attack. In “Lucky,” the memoir of her own rape, author Alice Sebold wrote how she learned that, “no one – females included – knew what to do with a rape victim,” and even Ann's loving parents are unsure of what to say to their daughter.

Nor does their community. How everyone learns of Ann's rape is left unsaid, but it's made very clear that they do. The students in Ann's father's class and the other teachers stare at him. More disturbing is how men try to be well-meaning and kind, patting her comfortingly, but the women mostly keep their distance as they stare and whisper. No wonder that when Ann attempts to go back to work, small noises quickly overwhelm her. After such silence, even the softest sounds are deafening to her, and the film doesn't so much as portray her mindset but embed us in it as we share Ann's pain and deterioration.

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The situation with her fiance also doesn't help. Jim still wants to marry Ann, but only on his terms. When he says he wants to tie the knot the upcoming weekend, she stares at him with a repulsion and horror modern audiences may not be able to fully grasp. Marriage didn't just mean sex, it meant a husband could legally demand it anytime he wished, marital rape not yet being illegal. When Ann refuses, Jim shakes her and tells her to shut up. She responds, “I don't want to get married, ever. I don't want you to touch me. Everything's dirty, filthy and dirty.” Shortly thereafter, she runs away from home and finds herself on an orange picking farm.

In “Outrage,” it isn't only Ann's rapist who feels he has a right to her body. Every man in the film is entitled is his own way, even the saintly Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), who takes Ann in and helps her get work as a bookkeeper on the farm. But when's Ann's past rears its ugly head, he only takes her side up to a point. At a dance, a man comes up and keeps following Ann, touching her, and insisting after she repeatedly says no. It brings up memories of her trauma, so Ann hits him with a wrench, severely injuring him. But since he has a reputation as a good guy, he's given a pass for his creepy behavior and it's Ann who is blamed. Bruce never even asks if the man made her uncomfortable, even if he's eventually able to understand and empathize with her actions.

As Ann awaits judgment, she murmurs, “Maybe I am crazy. Sometimes I feel as if the whole world is upside down.” Even if “Outrage” can't quite fully grasp what exactly makes her world seem so backwards, it can hardly be faulted for failing to realize something we're still struggling to understand today. At least the film urges reform rather than punishment, not just for Ann, but for the man who raped her, who was caught and revealed to have spent half his life in reform schools and prisons without being identified or treated as a “sick individual.” Through Bruce, “Outrage” ends up advocating not just for compassion, but for more hospitals and clinics rather than prisons.

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As a result, Ann is not charged, but rather ordered to undergo outpatient treatment rather than sentenced to imprisonment or institutionalization. At Bruce's encouragement, she eventually stops running and goes back to the life she left behind. As she departs, “Outrage” optimistically imagines a happy future for Ann, one that is not defined by the trauma she endured. Even if it seems a bit too bright of an ending, it's one that's well-earned, and more than other movies seem to expect from women who have similar experiences.