The Hitch-Hiker

Driving down to Mexico for a weekend fishing trip, two unsuspecting friends pick up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a serial killer on the run. Held at gunpoint, the friends drive through whatever dangerous terrain the killer leads them through on his path towards escape. Regarded as the first and only American noir directed by a woman, this movie is void of central figures of the genre (including the femme fatale!), instead using the vast and open landscape as a host of pure fear.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Ida Lupino

Script: Ida Lupino, Collier Young

Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca

Editing: Douglas Stewart

Sound: Roy Meadows, Clem Portman

Music: Leith Stevens

Actors: Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman

Production: The Filmakers Inc., RKO Radio Pictures

Producers: Collier Young

Art Direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller

Make Up: Mel Berns

Format: 35mm

Color: B&W

Production Country: USA

Production Year: 1953

Duration: 71΄

Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was an English-born American film and television actress, director, and screenwriter who first gained fame through her portrayals of strong, worldly-wise characters and went on to become one of the first women to direct films in Hollywood. Lupino was born into one of England’s most-celebrated theatrical families. A serious performer, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London before getting her first big break. Promoted as “the English Jean Harlow,” Lupino signed her first Hollywood contract with Paramount in 1933. During the war, Lupino also began to consider how she might expand her motion picture career. In a 1945 interview she talked about “directing or producing or both. I see myself developing new talent” because “I am more genuinely interested in the talent of others than I am in my own.” With her second husband, Collier Young (her first husband was actor Louis Hayward), Lupino founded a production company in 1949 and began writing scripts, tackling such controversial topics as rape, illegitimacy, and bigamy. She made her official directing debut with Never Fear (1949; also known as The Young Lovers). With that film Lupino became Hollywood’s first credited female director since the retirement of Dorothy Arzner in 1943. In 1950 Lupino also became the second woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America. In 1956, she began directing episodes of television shows, and she eventually worked on more than 40 programs. During that time Lupino continued to act. From 1975 a series of health problems impaired her ability to work. Her memoir Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera (cowritten with Mary Ann Anderson) was published posthumously in 2011.