After a beautiful but unsophisticated girl is seduced by a worldly piano player and gives up her out-of-wedlock baby, her guilt compels her to kidnap another child.
Sally Forrest Keefe Brasselle Leo Penn Dorothy Adams Wheaton Chambers Rita Lupino Audrey Farr Carole Donne Ruth Clifford Ruthelma Stevens Virginia Mullen Marie Harmon Roger Anderson Gregg Barton Charles Seel Lawrence Dobkin Patrick Whyte Tom Coleman Diane Fauntelle Bob Jellison Anne O'Neal Leo Sulky Robert B. Williams
The Wrong Rut, Non abbandonarmi, Avant de t'aimer, 不想要, Mãe Solteira, 낫 원티드, Verführt
USA
USA
Action! - Female 4 Front: Breaking Grounds With Ida Lupino
Despite the fact that she has become well-known for her acting career, our second director is one of the female industry's unsung heroes since so much of her work behind the camera has gone uncredited (in this film's case, she stepped in after the actual director, Elmer Clifton, died unexpectedly). Thus, I am hoping that this marathon may provide some light on the work of this great filmmaker.
And we kick things off with a melodrama with psychological overtones about a strange woman who is apprehended for a day in the street trying to apparently abduct a baby, and for almost 90 minutes the film recounts the tragic life of…
In the six low-budget films Ida Lupino directed for the independent production company she co-founded after breaking free from Warners' clutches, one of her primary goals was to offer a female-oriented viewpoint on topical social issues, especially those impacting women. In Not Wanted, on which Lupino took over the directorial reigns very early on from an ill Elmer Clifton, she poignantly deals with a subject that was very much a taboo in the more conservative postwar society (and one Hollywood still seems to have trouble getting right): unwed and unwanted pregnancy. The film features Sally Forrest as a small-town waitress in her late teens who is swept off her feet by an itinerant musician. She decides to follow him to…
Co-produced, co-written, and directed by Ida Lupino (Lupino took over when original director Elmer Clifton had a heart attack three days into shooting, thus making it her unplanned, uncredited directorial debut), Not Wanted is a strikingly complex, nuanced exploration of unwanted pregnancy.
Deft and thoughtful from start to finish, the film's foundation is society's mistreatment of young, unwed mothers, reflected in attitudes we hear largely from the mouths of the mothers themselves, so deeply have they been forced to drink from the fountain of a conservative culture that denies the existence of sex outside of marriage. One of the girls, she say, "once" knew a nice boy, but "he was too good for me"; another weeps as she admits that…
miss sally is truly the biggest dumbass i ever met. making my little angel boy drew chase her around that whole town and up and down all those steps when she KNOWS he’s got a plastic leg...he did not deserve that and that’s all i have to say about it
A Classic Hollywood film about an “unwed mother” is such a rarity. The taboo and censorship codes greatly restrict what can be shown or expressed, so a lot of films that deal with “moral ambiguity” attempt to balance their judgment by bringing punishment and tragedy to the characters on display. In Not Wanted, the supposed recklessness of a young girl follows her to the end, and her wrongdoing (that is, having dared to have sex out of wedlock) is a source of great tragedy for the entirety of the story. However, I think I was most surprised by the level of sensitivity given to her situation, considering the context of the time. The film is very empathetic with the tough…
"They're all alike, honey. Never call when you want 'em to."
Sally Kelton picks up a baby out of its carriage and just walks away with it, apparently in a daze, her eyes far off, lingering in some other unknowable world. The baby's mother, horrified, chases after her and has her arrestsed. "How did I get here?" she wonders aloud, and thus begins a flashback where she explains how she fell in love with a charmingly aloof pianist who got her pregnant and abandoned her to her fate as an unwed mother.
Ida Lupino was the queen of making women's social issue dramas that were palatable for mainstream studios and audiences without losing their power by pandering or preaching or…
This was wonderful: I had ALWAYS adored Ida Lupino's work as an actress...and from thoroughly enjoying the two directorial efforts of hers I had seen ('The Hitch-Hiker' and 'On Dangerous Ground'), I decided to take a chance and buy Kino Lorber's recent 'Ida Lupino Filmmaker Collection': It had a dandy book, would upgrade my THH to blu, and give me three other of her films (including this) to peruse...
It was interesting to see views about unwed mothers and how thankfully they have changed (and how much society still has far to go IMHO) over the past 7 decades--AND how a woman, and a powerful one in Hollywood at the time, at that, approached the material. She shows wonderful compassion,…
The last 2 minutes... sis............ Why are you runnin'?! WHY are you runnin'?!?!
This was astoundingly well-done for its time. The subject of unwed motherhood was obviously hellishly taboo and often dealt with through a harsh, judgemental lens; however, this film treats its protagonist with a sensitivity not generally common in the mid-20th century (and very much historically). Though she is put through the wringer for her 'mistake' of falling pregnant out of wedlock, I don't think she's ever presented as any less worthy of all the things every human being deserves—to love and be loved, understanding, sympathy, kindness, second chances, among others.
Also, where can I get me a Drew Baxter? What a pure man.
Also 2.0, Ida Lupino. Her mind!
The first film directed by Ida Lupino, one of the few female directors of the Hollywood Studio era. She took over directing the film, which she was co-producing and had co-written, when original director Elmer Clifton suffered a heart attack. She refused to take a director's credit out of respect for Clifton, who died a few months after the films release.
Tired of the way she was treated by Warners, she set up an independent company with her husband, Collier Young, to "produce, direct, and write low-budget, issue-oriented films".
This was the first and, like many they made, was female focused. Sally Forrest plays Sally Kelton, a young woman still living with her parents who falls for a piano player.…
Although technically co-directed, with her taking over after Elmer Clifton's death mid-project, Ida Lupino's directorial debut is a striking, extremely well crafted and compassionate social drama B-movie, tackling the taboo topic of unwed pregnancy that major studios wouldn't touch with a bargepole at the time.
The crushing realism and use of physical space to delve into the character's psychology creates a modernity that is missing in so many big budget classic Hollywood productions—Lupino isn't looking to deceive audiences with contrivance but to make us empathise and understand what it would be like in that situation, something the film medium is tailor made for. Feelings of shame and self-loathing are developed and internalised in a wonderful performance by Sally Forrest as…
the use of sound in this is insane, especially for a throwaway studio product from the 40s, along with the score which seems to be a particularly strong element across all this woman's films i've seen. i can't believe how hard lupino's films consistently slap, but, like her one time collaborator nicholas ray, she has this boundless empathy from all of her characters who remotely deserve it. even the piano player here is given his fair shake, as a hard working artist who misjudged someone who misjudged him. and the writing is as great as ever, so full of deeply felt
understanding for the whole spectrum of anxieties that this film espouses.
