THE HITCH-HIKER: Thumbs Up

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Ida Lupino
Writers: Collier Young, Ida Lupino, Robert L. Joseph
Cast: Frank Lovejoy, Edmond O'Brien, William Talman
Runtime: 70 mins.
1953

When Ida Lupino was a child, her father told her, "You're a strange, interesting girl. Your mother and I, to be honest with you, prayed... we would have a son. I think you're going to end up doing what my son would have done. You will write, direct, and produce." This would turn out to be prescient, or perhaps something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Lupino would grow up to become an actress who was dissatisfied with the limits of a Hollywood acting career. She was frequently suspended by Warner Bros. for not making the movies they wanted her to make, and during that time she familiarized herself with the technical processes of filmmaking. In her words, while she was sitting around being bored on set, "someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work."

Lupino transitioned into producing, writing, and directing with her own production company, an unheard of feat for a woman in Hollywood during that era. In the earliest years of film female filmmakers were fairly common, but by the '40s and '50s Hollywood had become a boys' club, with women primarily relegated to acting and editing. Seventy years later and women are still by and large unwelcome in the director's chair, which makes Lupino's achievements all the more extraordinary. Not only was she prolific, but she was uncompromising in a way that was unpalatable to the gender roles of the time, yet she still managed to toe the line enough to keep finding opportunities to make her art. She was interested in creating strong female characters, "[not] women who have masculine qualities about them, but [a role] that has intestinal fortitude, some guts to it." Again, seventy years later and this is still a concept that big budget writers and studio execs cannot wrap their minds around, instead construing the term Strong Female Character as a hot woman who can punch things hard. Lupino accessed the power of the feminine in a masculine-dominated world, preferring to be called "mother" while on set, which she considered emblematic of the act of creation.

All this is fascinating to keep in mind when looking at The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino's sixth (though only fourth credited) directorial effort. The film follows two fishing buddies who pick up a dangerous hitchhiker, the psychopathic killer Emmett Myers (William Talman). The film chronicles their captivity, in which they are forced at gunpoint to aid Myers' escape across Baja California. Snippets of the police pursuit are sprinkled throughout, but for the most part we are trapped in pressure cooker situation after situation, in which Myers abuses his captives both physically and psychologically. He considers them weak, you see, too dependent upon the love and support of others, whereas he is strong because he's always made his own way and never taken any help from anybody.


The Hitch-Hiker is considered the first, and perhaps the purest film noir ever directed by a woman. Indeed, despite Lupino's penchant for compelling female characters, not a single woman appears onscreen throughout the movie's runtime. The one exception is a little Mexican girl, expertly used in one scene both to ratchet up tension and provide a brief moment of human connection for our protagonists, who spend most of the movie both literally and emotionally stranded in a desert with a self-serving maniac.

Unlike many other noir films, masculinity is not placed on a pedestal. It is deconstructed. Myers represents a sort of hypermasculine individualist point of view. Our two heroes, meanwhile, have wives and families that they went on this trip (and thus got into this mess) to get away from for a while. The reinforcement of family values is a familiar conservative '50s screed, but the way it is used to shine light on the unpredictable and damaging nature of rampant masculinity is fairly progressive. From the very beginning, Myers barks orders at his captives, controlling their bodies with his gun and the force of his words. He is ceaselessly alert and pragmatic. His pragmatism takes a turn in a brilliant scene midway through the film, as Myers forces the more emotionally stable of the two protagonists, Bowen (Frank Lovejoy), to demonstrate his skill with a gun. Myers and Bowen take turns shooting cans off of rocks, until Myers suggests that Bowens shoot the can out of his friend Collins's (Edmond O'Brien) hand, instead. The mandatory masculine pissing contest becomes a source of unbearable tension, a better version of a similar scene in Skyfall. Except here, the hero doesn't follow it up by taking out three henchmen and capturing the bad guy. Here the hero must surrender his weapon and continue to be helpless at the hands of his captor.

That scene is one of many throughout the movie that achieve a tremendous degree of tension, even for my modern supersaturated desensitized brain. The tension doesn't issue from the admittedly thin premise so much as it does from Lupino's deft directorial presence. Noir is a traditionally claustrophobic genre, and The Hitch-Hiker is no different despite its setting in the Mexican desert. The wide open vistas are contrasted with the cramped car quarters where we spend most of the film. Her attention to detail is astounding, as the camera works within the limitations she has set for herself to find the perfect position for featuring the dramatic stakes. Our characters are not given much depth, but Lupino captures their psychology by highlighting subtle cracks in their tough guy exteriors.

Lupino's style wrings drama out of a lean premise through sheer willpower and finesse, but it runs a bit thin toward the end. Even at a brisk 70 minutes, there are only so many times we can be invested in watching the killer bark orders and the captives follow them dutifully. That said, every time the drama starts to feel stale, we are treated to a brilliant new wrinkle, like the unsettling fact that the fugitive's bum eye makes it so our heroes can never tell whether or not he is truly asleep at night.

The streamlined scenario, the precise camerawork, and the sense of being trapped on the open road all make The Hitch-Hiker a compelling precursor to Steven Spielberg's directorial breakthrough, Duel. The transitions between shots of the car barreling through the desert with Leith Stevens's rankling score underneath, and shots of its trapped occupants, feel like something a young Spielberg must have studied with rapt attention. Just as Spielberg would decades later, Lupino makes it all seem so effortless.

On the contrary, directing a quality feature film is a monumental achievement, and all the more so in an industry that reflexively rejects you because of your gender. Lupino proves definitively that directing is not a man's game, and that The Mother can have complete control over her artistic vision.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS