The Bigamist (1953): A Review

THE BIGAMIST

Can a man love two women simultaneously? If we go by The Bigamist, it appears so. Skewing sensationalism for a more somber take on the subject, The Bigamist at times plays like the cast and crew are living out their own lives on screen. However, a short runtime and an engaging production all around makes The Bigamist worth watching.  

Posh Eva Graham (Joan Fontaine) wants to adopt a child after finding that she is unable to have any. Her husband Harry (Edmond O'Brien) seems happy to join her in this endeavor. The child agency official Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) senses something slightly off about Harry, as if he is attempting to show enthusiasm but is hiding something.

Mr. Jordan begins investigating the Grahams. It is routine to look into the background of potential adoptive parents. However, Mr. Jordan is in for a wild surprise when it comes to Harry, a traveling salesman. While Harry and Eva live in San Francisco, work takes Harry to Los Angeles often. Following up on a hunch, Mr. Jordan begins to wonder why Harry leaves no real impression when in Los Angeles: no hotel reservations, no dining out, not even sending out for laundry. 

Mr. Jordan eventually finds "Harrison Graham" and discovers a shocking secret. Harrison and Harry are one and the same, only Harrison has another wife and a child, a boy named Danny in Los Angeles. Before he calls the police, Harry begs Mr. Jordan to listen to his story first. 

Life can be lonely on the road. While Harry loves Eva, she had grown distant owing to their successful business. While in Los Angeles, he meets Phyllis (director Ida Lupino), a waitress with no interest in being a pickup for anyone. Despite this, they end up bonding after taking a tour of movie stars homes. Eventually, they begin an affair. Eva realizes that she has pushed Harry away and they begin to reconcile, but then her father takes ill. 

It is now that Harry discovers that Phyllis is pregnant. She does not ask him to marry her, but Harry decides to do the honorable thing and legitimize their child. Phyllis, who knows nothing of Harry's current marriage, does her best with him and their baby. Harry's wild scheme is to stay with Eva long enough for her to formalize the adoption, then divorce her to stay with Phyllis. However, this scheme fell apart when here comes Mr. Jordan. With the secret out, Harry is arrested for bigamy. Which one of the two Mrs. Grahams will ultimately end up being wild about Harry?

The backstage story of The Bigamist is as interesting as what is on the screen. Ida Lupino already was breaking barriers when she went into directing, though she ultimately directed only seven features. She, I believe, was one of the first actresses to direct themselves in film. I think she was the first woman to direct herself in an American film, because I think Leni Riefenstahl directed herself in The Blue Light in 1932. 

That, however, does not cover the strange connection between actress/director Lupino and her costar Joan Fontaine. Like Phyllis and Eva, Lupino and Fontaine shared a husband. Collier Young, who coproduced The Bigamist and wrote the screenplay, was Lupino's second husband. They divorced in 1951. In 1952, he married Joan Fontaine, who became her third husband. The Bigamist was made in 1953. As such, you had the second wife directing the third wife in a film written and produced by the second wife's second husband and the third wife's third husband.

One wonders if all of them thought anything about all this was just a bit nutty. 

Something that was driving me nutty were not one but two inside jokes about Edmund Gwenn. O'Brien as Harry quipped that Mr. Jordan looked like Santa Claus. If that had been the one nod to Gwenn's Oscar-winning role in Miracle on 34th Street, that would have been fine, even amusing. However, they did it again when Phyllis and Harry are on that Hollywood Tour of Stars Homes. The tour guide points out the home of Edmund Gwenn, star of that beloved film Miracle on 34th Street. 

At that point, my eyes rolled. We get the jokes. We just don't think that they are funny or clever.

As a side note, The Bigamist has four Oscar winners in the cast: Fontaine (Suspicion), O'Brien (The Barefoot Contessa), Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street) and Jane Darwell (The Grapes of Wrath), who has a small role of a cleaning lady in Jordan's office. 

If not for all these "Mr. Jordan is Santa Claus" bits, I would have ranked The Bigamist higher. Still, the film itself is a well-acted and directed film tackling a dicey subject with restraint and taste. O'Brien probably has the hardest job in making Harry/Harrison's duplicity not come across as selfish or lascivious. His Harry is quite soft-spoken in his delivery. We see that Harry did a bad thing in cheating on Eva with Phyllis. As much as the screenplay can, it makes his fall to temptation appear understandable. Phyllis is not a designing woman out to seduce a man. In fact, she initially tells Harry that she would not want him to marry her after learning of her pregnancy. She won't "trap a man" in this fashion.

We also see that events continue to work against Harry. He is about to tell his wife about his affair when he learns that Eva's father died. He knows that these back-to-back blows would be too much for her. It is a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". 

Lupino ably directs herself to make Phyllis both a tough cookie and a vulnerable woman. She carries herself with a unique grace and courage but also loves Harrison. I found Fontaine a bit patrician as Eva, the wronged woman. However, I think that was the character, so I am not holding that against her. Gwenn was if not impish at least pleasant as Mr. Jordan. However, he was able to rally his anger at the various deceptions going on. "I despise you, and I pity you", he tells Harry before leaving Harry's love nest. 

We are left with an ambiguous ending. Harry has been caught and will go to prison. He will also have to support both women as well as Phyllis' baby (I do not think Eva's adoption went through). However, we do not know if either Phyllis or Eva will stand by their man or even want to. It is only at the end when we do see the three of them together. That vague ending works because we now can ask what our own reactions would be at the situation.

The Bigamist works on almost all levels. The Gwenn quips were a bit silly. On the whole though, The Bigamist looks at what could be a sordid topic and has an intelligent, adult manner to it. Short at 80 minutes, The Bigamist packs a lot into this sad story of love and deception. Only you can answer for yourself what you would have done if you had been Harry, Eva or Phyllis. 

Love certainly is strange. 

DECISION: B+

Outrage (1950): A Review

OUTRAGE

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Ida Lupino.

I opted to review not an Ida Lupino performance but an Ida Lupino film. Outrage is the third film Lupino directed, making her more than just the rare female director but an even rarer film star to be a director. Long before Barbra Streisand, Jodie Foster or Olivia Wilde transitioned from in front of the camera to behind it, Ida Lupino blazed the trail they would all follow. Visually effective and tackling an important subject, Outrage works well and mostly holds your attention.

Ann Walton (Mala Powers) is happy in her life, working as a bookkeeper and dating Jim Owens (Robert Clarke). Jim proposes and her happiness is complete. That is until a canteen worker who has attempted to flirt with Ann spots her leaving work late one night. While nothing is shown, it is clear that Ann has been raped.

Traumatized and fearful, Ann keeps breaking down emotionally. She impulsively decides to run away from her hometown and flee to Los Angeles. However, when she hears on the radio about her disappearance, Ann starts walking and eventually falls in exhaustion. Fortunately, she is found by a man whom she eventually discovers is Reverend Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews). Finding shelter among Ferguson and his friends, the now-Ann Blake starts rebuilding her life. Things seem to be going well, if not perfect, until she reluctantly agrees to go to a local picnic/dance. Frank Marini (Jerry Paris) attempts to flirt with her, culminating in a forced kiss. She begins having flashbacks and beats Frank with a wrench. Will her past destroy her future? Will Ann be able to recover enough to literally and metaphorically go home again?

One of the best elements in Outrage, which Lupino also cowrote with Malvin Wald and Collier Young (who was also Lupino's husband at the time) is that it manages to reveal enough without being in any way graphic. The standards at the time would not have permitted Outrage to use the word "rape", let alone show it. The closest the film gets is when using the word "assault". However, it is clear what happened to Ann. This, I think makes Outrage more effective in that the film trusts us to understand what is going on without having to spell it out for us.

I think it makes the horror of Ann's rape more effective because it is left to our imagination. Lupino excels in this sequence. We do have some music early on to indicate the menace, but the sequence of the man pursuing Ann, her efforts to flee from him and the end are without a score. This builds up the tension, allowing the audience to focus on the growing danger. We end the scene with an overhead shot of the rapist approaching a crumpled Ann while a man at a window, coming out to hear why a horn is sounding, doesn't see anything and closes the window.

It is hard not to be horrified by the scene, and Outrage makes a subtle suggestion about the indifference of others when that man closes a window and does not see the woman in danger. Here, we can say that it is allegory. We can also say it works on a purely surface level, where there is no symbolism intended. I think that it is open to interpretation, making it work either way.

Outrage is realistic in portraying Ann's trauma. When poor Frank starts approaching Ann, the film shifts to Ann's POV. Here, the soundtrack makes Frank's voice fade into an echo and Lupino uses eerie music to show her confused state of mind. While I think Frank was coming on a bit strong, I also think Ann should have confided in the counselor that came with the police right after her assault or in Reverend Ferguson. Frank could have been killed, which would have shifted attention from Ann's trauma to Ann's crime. Outrage does not shy away from both the reasoning behind Ann's actions and films the sequence well. It also, again to its credit, does not suggest that Frank deserved to be murdered. 

Outrage is cinematically impressive, with many excellent scenes that reveal more than dialogue would. Early in the film, we see how Lupino shot the engagement scene. She put Jim and Ann's mother in the background while Ann's father and Ann are in the foreground. The direction makes clear that Ann's father is a bit upset at having to lose his daughter, but Ann is tenderly comforting him. When Ann is brought to a lineup to find the potential rapist, Lupino provides a good montage of how traumatizing this experience is.

Outrage is a B-film, where the budget shows that it was limited in what it could do. From the looks of it, the living room of the ranch house where Ann takes refuge looks exactly like the living room of her parents' home. Credit should be given that the film managed to make it work, but I think the sets look the same. 

The film is mostly well-acted. I found Powers a bit exaggerated in her performance before the assault. I think she portrayed the trauma and long-term effects of Ann's rape well, though sometimes she did come across as overdramatic no matter what the situation. Andrews' Reverend Ferguson has a strong moment where he discusses his return to faith after the war. He, however, also had an off moment when attempting to indict society for Ann's plight. He insists that had her rapist received rehabilitation from his previous arrests for robbery rather than just released at the end of his sentence, he might not have turned back to crime. 

I do not know if this is true, and it felt a bit off. The film also ends on an ambiguous ending. Ann does get on the bus heading back to her hometown, where her parents and Jim have been searching and waiting for her. However, is it what Ann truly wants, or does she do it to make Ferguson happy? Even Ferguson does not look happy, but more concerned. It may not be a happy way to end Outrage, but it may be truthful.

Outrage looks at a serious subject with respect, restraint and without sensationalism. It showcases Ida Lupino's visual skills and strong direction. It is definitely worth the viewers' time.

DECISION: B+