Ida Lupino Retrospective
As an actress, Ida Lupino once referred to herself as a “poor man’s Bette Davis,” and her various leading roles opposite the likes of Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and Robert Ryan revealed her to be a double-edged femme fatale, at once weak and ambitious, vulnerable and deadly. With the glassy eyed appearance of a deer caught in the headlights who suddenly decides to take revenge on the car, Lupino gracefully stormed through some of Hollywood’s best film noirs, including Nicholas Ray’s brilliant On Dangerous Ground (1954), Raoul Walsh’s gangster classics They Drive By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), and Don Siegel’s prison-exploitation madhouse Private Hell 36 (1954).
As a filmmaker, Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood in the 1950’s, and her unique oeuvre includes a number of low-budget noir gems that tackled tough, often feminist issues that none of the studios at the time wanted to handle. While her psycho killer tale The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is a bold, minimalist foray into the thriller genre, films like Not Wanted (1949), which follows the travails of an unwed mother in a hostile world, and Outrage (1950), the realistic account of a rape and its consequences, were revolutionary in their dark portrayals of a woman’s plight during the male dominated post-war era.
Actress, director, but also screenwriter and producer through her very own production company, Lupino may very well be the first modern independent filmmaker, getting her start almost a decade ahead of legendary actor/director John Cassavettes. Who would’ve guessed that the godfather of what we now call “indie film” was in fact a woman?
September 12-19
La Cinémathèque, 51, rue de Bercy, Paris 12 M° Bercy. 01 71 19 33 33. www.cinematheque.fr
Suspiria (1977)
Just in time for Halloween and its usual offering of second-rate horror film remakes, the re-release of Dario Argento’s Suspiria will give viewers a chance to discover a true masterwork of the often battered genre. An explosion of color, light, image, and sound, Suspiria is less about shock and gore than about taking the horror aesthetic to its most abstract and beautiful limits. From one baroque set piece to another, Argento’s constantly roving widescreen compositions follow a young American dancer (Jessica Harper) as she slowly discovers that her German ballerina school is run by a secret society of witches, with each sequence taking her closer to the bloody truth. The scene in which her roommate stumbles upon a hidden trap will definitely put the fear of barbed wire into you, while another involving a blind pianist will make you think twice before walking your dog alone at night.
Opens Oct 17. On limited release.
