The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Film: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Stars: Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman

Director: Ida Lupino

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

During the first 35 years of the Directors Guild of America, only three women were admitted as members. The first was Dorothy Arzner, whose musical drama Dance, Girl, Dance has since been hailed as a classic.  The third was Elaine May, who made her first feature film in 1971 after decades of appearing alongside Oscar-winner Mike Nichols in a comedy tour (she'd go on to make some of the most singular comedies of the 1970's).  The second, though, is best known to most as an actress, not as a director.  We've talked a lot about Ida Lupino on this blog through the years, particularly in 2019 when she was honored as one of our Saturdays with the Stars.  We profiled her film The Bigamist that month, when she became the first woman to direct herself in a major studio movie.  But we didn't talk about arguably her most well-known film.  That would be The Hitch-Hiker, which doesn't feature Lupino at all behind the camera, and was made by her production company The Filmakers in 1953.  The movie was the first noir to be directed by a woman, and has since been hailed as something of a landmark thriller.  I was curious, given my total adoration, what I'd feel like when she totally gave up on the front-of-the-camera and immersed herself behind it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Hitch-Hiker is largely a trio.  While there are other characters, they don't matter in this film, as we see friends Roy Collins (O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Lovejoy), who pickup a hitchhiker on their way to a Mexican fishing trip.  Once he's in the car, they realize that the hitchhiker is noted serial killer Emmett Myers (Talman), who is trying to flee into Mexico & disappear from the law.  Along the way, the men start to become terrorized by Emmett, with him even forcing them to play a game of "shoot the tin can" while Roy holds the tin can & Gilbert shoots (and thankfully doesn't miss).  When their car breaks down, they have to take off on foot, with Emmett ridiculing Roy who hurts himself when they attempt escape, making getting away impossible for him.  At the end, the law finally catches up with Emmett, with the two men finally freed, but forever changed.

The movie is based on the real-life criminal Billy Cook, who killed five people and then took multiple people hostage as he tried to flee.  It's violent, though probably not as violent as you'd expect.  The movie is 71-minutes long (considering The Filmakers was producing it on a shoestring budget, this makes sense), and I suspect giving it another 20 minutes you might have had a classic on your hand, given how good Talman is as Emmett.  A longer runtime would've allowed Lupino time to flesh out Collins & Bowen, who at the time would've read as pretty different to the public (O'Brien being a well-known character actor), but decades later, they almost register as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern given how little O'Brien's cultural cache has remained.  This results in the movie being a bit misbegotten.

But it does show the talent of Lupino that she clearly did all she could with an undercooked concept and no money.  Lupino's name as a director was largely made in women's pictures, melodramas that were similar to the ones she made when she was a headliner at Warner Brothers in the 1940's.  Lupino spent much of that decade being overshadowed by Bette Davis, never getting the career she hoped for even though she definitely had the talent.  Lupino would make The Bigamist later that year, but wouldn't make another film for 13 years when she made an unlikely switch to make the family flick The Trouble with Angels with Rosalind Russell & Hayley Mills (her final picture).

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Woman on the Beach, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, The Asphalt Jungle, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat