TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Crime, Romance, Melodrama, Thriller
Key Collaborators: Collier Young (Producer/Screenwriter), Archie Stout (Cinematographer), Leith Stevens (Composer), Edmond O'Brien (Leading Actor), Sally Forrest (Leading Actress), Robert Clarke (Leading Actor), William Ziegler (Editor), Harvey Manger (Editor), Kenneth Patterson (Leading Character Actor), Albert S. D'Agostino (Production Designer)

"As a film director, Lupino can be characterized as a social realist because she relished tackling daring topics that were usually overlooked in Hollywood at the time. Critics have praised her as an auteur because her work reveals a consistency of themes and motifs. Certainly she often selected controversial social issues as the subjects of her films, such as rape, promiscuity, single motherhood, and bigamy, though she provided no easy answers and the films themselves often end ambiguously… Her films explore the themes of feminine sexuality, independence, and dependence, and her female characters are as likely to be villains, or at least morally questionable, as they are to be heroines." - Cynthia Felando (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)

"Suspended from studio contracts, Lupino turned her hand to directing, forming a production company known as The Filmakers with then-husband, writer-producer Collier Young. It’s impossible to underestimate Lupino’s achievements as director in the four years The Filmakers was in business. The Senses of Cinema profile on Lupino notes that between 1943 and 1949 there wasn’t a single film directed by a woman in Hollywood. Uncompromising in her vision “to make pictures of a sociological nature… to tackle serious themes and problem dramas,” Lupino would shoot on the streets of Los Angeles for a pittance, before making a break into self-distribution. If ever there was a precursor to the independents who would emerge with John Cassavetes in the late 1950s, it was the movie star whose greatest contribution to film history lay behind the camera." - Matthew Thrift (BFI, 2018)

"During the early 1950s Ida Lupino was virtually the only female director working in mainstream Hollywood. Although her output was small - seven films in all - her matter-of-fact professionalism served as an inspiration for other women, not least the great Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka, who pursued her own directing career after meeting Lupino." - Philip Kemp (501 Movie Directors, 2007)

"She was a woman working in Hollywood at a time when both the cultural climate and the incipient sexism of the industry mitigated against her efforts; she was an actress who turned to direction when her career in front of the camera failed to satisfy her needs as an artist; she directed films and television shows of a surprisingly violent nature during a period when television was known as the “safe” medium; and she was unafraid to tackle impossible schedules and production budgets on a routine basis, creating work of dignity and originality under exceedingly difficult circumstances. Lupino’s work is one of the most singular testaments of the 1950s, an era when women were still very much on the margins of cinematic practice." - Wheeler Winston Dixon (Senses of Cinema, 2009)

"Graphic suspense dramas with psychological overtones make Lupino's directorial career worth studying." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today, it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power... I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right." - Ida Lupino