A shame it took me so long to take a look at the work of Ida Lupino. I mean I’d seen her in a couple movies here and there, but never before focused on her far more meaningful career as a director. And she was a seminal one -virtually the only woman director active during the Golden Age of Hollywood. For her Filmmakers production company, she made several thematically ambitious, often socially conscious movies unlike anything being produced at the time for the bigger studios: films about unwed pregnancy, sexual assault, serial killers, struggles with polio -and her name recognition as an actress gave her and these films credibility. In her later years she worked mostly in television, where she directed among other shows the scariest episode of The Twilight Zone I’ve seen (“The Masks” -it’ll give you nightmares). And even though she never identified with the term, she has long been upheld as a major figure of feminist film history.
The last film of her peak directing era and one of her most acclaimed was The Bigamist -a drama about a seemingly well-meaning man who through complicated circumstance is secretly married to two woman. Perhaps not the most pressing of Lupino’s social issues films, but one that is certainly curious in its perspective -for multiple reasons- and for the fact it was Lupino’s only movie in which she directed herself, a rare thing at the time for American directors of any gender.
The Bigamist stars Edmond O’Brien, also the star of Lupino’s previous The Hitch-Hiker, as Harry Graham, a San Francisco-based man looking to adopt with his infertile wife Eve (Joan Fontaine). For reasons that aren’t made explicitly clear, the adoptions agent Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) is extraordinarily cautious about the backgrounds of potential parents, to the point of going deep into an investigation down to Los Angeles where Harry works from time to time off of vague suspicions around his character. But sure enough it leads him to another home where he finds Harry with a baby he’s had with another woman -also his wife, Phyllis (Lupino). From there the bulk of the movie plays out in flashback depicting the peculiar series of events that led to this case of bigamy.
Lupino does a really good job with character subversion, particularly around Harry, in a way that manages to be effective even seventy years later. For the first act, largely concerning Jordan’s investigation, Harry is drawn as an exceptionally shady character -he’s immediately on guard when Jordan emphasizes the need for a background check in the opening interview. People who know him in Los Angeles have rather ambiguous things to say about him, and in his personality he’s certainly a bit off-putting -a man who plainly has something to hide, and if it weren’t for the title you wouldn’t be able to guess exactly what. And it helps that O’Brien as an actor is not the standard leading man type, he has a certain sinister quality to his eyebrows, his smile. It is a perspective wherein the male lead is depicted as deceitful, possibly dangerous in matters of the domestic sphere, very unusual for old Hollywood, and highly pertinent for women -who in film noirs of the time were themselves represented by these kinds of depictions.
But then Lupino curiously flips the script. Once Jordan has tracked down Harry and confronted him we’re treated to a narrative (albeit one crucially to keep in mind is entirely his own) that sympathizes with Harry and presents him as a unique victim of circumstance. He met Phyllis by chance in L.A. during a time of emotional distance from Eve -where she has been consumed with the work of Harry’s business and he felt lonely and neglected. He apparently tried all the right moves: confessing his feelings for another woman, talking to Eve about getting closer -but she wasn’t receptive to them. Gradually in L.A. he spent more time with Phyllis that developed into a romance and even a night of infidelity. Upon learning she was pregnant, he endeavoured again to admit the truth to Eve and ask for a divorce but found he couldn’t bring himself to in the aftermath of her father’s death and renewed commitment to their relationship. But not wanting to abandon Phyllis or force her to have a child out of wedlock, he married her -with the hopes of being able to wait until the adoption process with Eve was through before divorcing her and staying with Phyllis, out of a conviction it would be the only right thing to do.
Where this story could have been told as lascivious criminal scandal, it is instead presented as a tragedy, with Harry being given every benefit of the doubt as to his character –up to and including taking full accountability of his wrongdoing. There is a lot that goes into making him empathetic, even by today’s standards -beyond keeping up the lie, he doesn’t do or even say anything untowards in either relationship, he is in touch with his emotions, understands their needs. It would have been easier and honestly more authentic to depict him in a less flattering light -especially coming from a woman director- so why not? Firstly, it should be noted that even while sex plays a pivotal part (it is Harry’s sexual infidelity that makes the situation so much worse), the bigamy is emphasized in purely non-sexual terms. Part of this stems from the censorship of the time -in spite of the title, the words ‘bigamy’ or ‘bigamist’ are barely uttered in the movie at all- which prevents any real discussion of the sexual nature, or indeed appeal, of such a thing for the man. Bigamy is entirely construed here as a social crime -a disruption, perhaps even a perversion, of the middle-class nuclear family image. In this context it feels curiously tame in severity -victimless beyond some emotional distress on the women involved; and more comparable to other 1950s crossings of socially acceptable boundaries like miscegenation or homosexuality, rather than polygamy.
But it must also be noted that this script comes courtesy of a male screenwriter, and not just any male screenwriter but Collier Young –co-founder of Lupino’s Filmmakers production house, and in a suspicious parallel to the film’s plot, at that time married to Joan Fontaine after having been divorced from Lupino. There was no bigamy on his part but it is curious to reflect on how he and Lupino divorced in 1951, he’d married Fontaine by 1952, and this movie had to have been written and in production at least by the end of that year for its December 1953 release. It’s speculation sure, but you can’t help but consider in light of the subject matter here how Young’s experience married to both women headlining this movie informed the way he approached the material and the Harry character especially –as though wanting to make sure the audience (or even his ex-wife the director) understood he wasn’t the bad guy.
It’s a factor that makes Lupino’s choices, both as director and actress, all the more interesting. How she perceives the bigamist in relation to Young and how that comes across. And she does relate a certain degree of empathy, framing O’Brien by his surroundings and appearance in an everyman light. But Lupino knows he is not one -that his privilege can afford him this secrecy and this deceit which, however he attempts to justify it, is deplorable. Moreover, she is conscious that Harry’s story dominates the script and overshadows the women. Rather than openly push back against this though, she hints at deeper layers through her camera and performances -her own being one of them of course. The narrative would have the pair framed at odds, one woman obviously superior to the other -but Lupino views each of them with sympathy. Where the script may suggest Eve’s business interests and lack of attentiveness to Harry is what beget the whole affair, Fontaine’s performance is earnest and focused, Lupino refusing to let her be a scapegoat for merely being enthusiastic about work that infringes on patriarchal norms. I imagine Lupino got some delight out of turning the tables -Harry being the emotional one looking for romance while Eve is only mildly interested. Audiences of the 1950s wouldn’t have batted an eye had this circumstance been reversed -it was a standard movie dynamic. And Lupino herself is very considered in her performance as well. Phyllis is positioned by the script as the woman Harry ought to be with -not having the perceived character flaws of Eve. But Lupino doesn’t play her in any kind of lovestruck ingénue fashion (the very type that Fontaine had played in movies for directors like Alfred Hitchcock). In fact Lupino, though being a year younger than Fontaine, radiates a more intense maturity. We see her character unattached, and contrary to convention of the time, she seems particularly sharp and sensible in spite of this. Throughout her relationship with Harry a certain cautiousness can even be detected, and when she learns the truth independent of him telling her, it is a visceral confrontation way more concerned with her feelings than his.
The culmination of the movie is a short trial scene -Jordan doesn’t have Harry arrested, but he turns himself in. He is the central figure again, judged coldly by everyone in the courtroom in contrast to the audience’s now mixed feelings; but it’s worth honing in on the women -sharing the screen for the first time in the movie. There’s judgement on their faces as well, but of a different kind. The judge pontificates that after Harry’s sentence he’ll be legally obligated to support both Eve and Phyllis, but questioning if either of them will take him back. And as they face each other it is ambiguous if one of them will -both seeming sympathetic but perhaps also capable of leaving Harry behind. It deprives the end of a clear pairing, a clear resolution, and suggests an agency to these women in Harry’s absence. For whatever his reasons, they were wronged -and the movie doesn’t let its audience forget that.
The Bigamist does feel different from other movies of the period, and not just for this kind of ambiguity or the taboo subject matter. For as much as the script might lean into a sympathizing male voice, Lupino’s female voice at the helm comes across clearly if subtly -and makes the movie far more interesting than it would have been otherwise. I could see a Hitchcock or Douglas Sirk working with this material, and for whatever unique flourishes they could bring, there would be something vital missing. Lupino obviously bucked trends as a director, not only for being a woman behind the camera but for being a woman directing movies about harsh, challenging subjects. The Bigamist was the last of these, and though it might seem a bit tame next to the likes of Not Wanted or Outrage, it succeeds on its fierce unexpected perspectives, and a covert thematic boldness.
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