Despite making a hit, after The Hitch-Hiker, Ida Lupino was only given the opportunity to direct two more features. She later transitioned into directing television and continued to act until 1978, before passing away in 1995.
Included in the official press notes for The Hitch-Hiker was an interview with Lupino called “Ida Lupino Retains Her Femininity as Director.” Speaking about her style as a filmmaker on set, Lupino was quoted as saying: “I retain every feminine trait. Men prefer it that way. They’re more cooperative if they see that fundamentally you are of the weaker sex even though [you are] in a position to give orders, which normally is the male prerogative, or so he likes to think, anyway. While I’ve encountered no resentment from the male of the species for intruding into their world, I give them no opportunity to think I’ve strayed where I don’t belong. I assume no masculine characteristics, which can often be a fault of career women rubbing shoulders with their male counterparts, who become merely arrogant or authoritative.”
Considering the time in which she lived, it’s remarkable that Ida Lupino had the type of career that she did at all. She was an actress who made the decision to step away from her successful and promising career to go behind the camera, as well as a filmmaker who made bold movies looking at gender roles at a time when there were no other women doing anything similar in Hollywood. To survive, Ida Lupino knew she had to be strong-willed, ambitious, and cunning. She wasn’t taught how to direct, she simply did it instinctively. And as The Hitch-Hiker shows, she could do it just as well as any man.
With The Hitch-Hiker, Ida Lupino was a rare woman director who explored masculinity and identity within the genre of film noir. Gone are the femme fatales and damsels in distress; here Lupino focuses solely on male characters. Her protagonists must decide if they are heroes (i.e., “real men”) or not. She uses simple camera techniques to enhance and hold the tension throughout the entire story. By making this film, Lupino proved that women could be just as adept at directing suspense thrillers as their male counterparts.
★Ida Lupino is credited with directing six feature films on subjects ranging from rape to kidnapping. She was the first woman to helm a film noir and the first since Dorothy Arzner to consistently work in Hollywood.
★Lupino’s director’s chair bore her nickname:
“Mother of All of Us.”
★The tagline for The Hitch-Hiker read “There’s Death in His Upraised Thumb!”
★As part of her research, Ida Lupino visited the real serial killer, William Cook, at San Quentin prison. She later called the experience “very scary.”
★Though he portrayed a dangerous killer here, actor
William Talman went on to find fame playing Raymond Burr’s nemesis, LA District Attorney Hamilton Burger, in the TV show Perry Mason.
★Lupino often appeared in her own movies, making cameo appearances—just like Alfred Hitchcock.
Cleo from 5 to 7
(Cléo de 5 à 7)
Rome Paris Films, 1962, France | Black & White and Color, 90 minutes
A real-time drama following a singer waiting for the results of a medical test.
Director: Agnès Varda
Producers: Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti
Cinematography: Paul Bonis,
Alain Levent, Jean Rabier
Screenplay: Agnès Varda
Starring: Corinne Marchand (“Florence ‘Cléo’ Victoire”), Dominque Davray (“Angèle”), Antoine Bourseiller (“Antoine”), Dorothée Blanck (“Dorothée”)
“In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.”
—Agnès Varda
Throughout cinema history, there have been several films made in “real-time,” meaning that the events shown are allowed to unfold at the same pace that the characters experience them. This is a useful device for ramping up suspense in stories about people under pressure—with the minutes ticking down toward the possible discovery of a murder (Rope), a jury’s decision (12 Angry Men), a bank robbery (Victoria), or even the oxygen levels inside a coffin (Buried). In Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda uses this anxiety-infused technique to add drama to her gentle film about a woman walking through the streets of Paris.
The title is in fact a little misleading, as the film actually follows Florence “Cléo” Victoire (Corinne Marchand) for an hour and a half as she waits for the results of a medical diagnosis. It begins at 5:00 p.m. with Cléo having her tarot cards read, and finishes at 6:30 p.m. as her test results are received. In between, Cléo wanders through 1960s Paris, visiting friends, drinking in cafés, walking through a park, traveling in cabs and trams, rehearsing her act, and finally, meeting a lovely soldier. She covers much ground in just ninety minutes, and we learn a lot about her in the process. Cléo is a pop singer with three minor hits to her name. She is impulsive, volatile, and given to quick changes in emotion and adding as much drama as her friends will put up with. She’s also superficial and vain, admiring herself in every reflective surface. In this way, Agnès Varda avoids sentimentality. The audience feels for Cléo’s impending medical diagnosis, but she’s not always likable.
Instead of the single-take concept that many of these real-time movies employ, Agnès Varda uses jump cuts, handheld cameras, transitions from color to black-and-white film, and unconventional framing to give the film a sense of playful freedom. She utilizes some of the same techniques as the burgeoning cinema verité (“real cinema”) genre to add a feeling of immediacy. And so, by placing Cléo’s story in real-time and using a documentary style, this everyday story becomes highly dramatic onscreen. It’s also something of a time capsule of 1960s Paris, incorporating real footage of the bustling city streets. There is also a fun silent film inserted into the middle of the story, starring Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, and Jean-Claude Brialy.
The major theme in Cleo from 5 to 7 is time. This refers to both objective time (the actual minutes) and subjective time (how time can seem to contract or expand depending on your situation). The other theme is about women being “seen”—how Cléo sees herself, how she is seen by others, and how much (or little) she sees others—all told through the perceptive eyes of Agnès Varda.
The experimental nature of Cleo from 5 to 7 is reminiscent of other films from the French New Wave such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and The 400 Blows by François Truffaut. But although the latter film is often credited with starting this cinematic movement, Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte (named after the small fishing village where it was filmed) was released five years earlier and is now regarded as the first film of the French New Wave. This movement contained two distinct camps of filmmakers, each with their own style. The “Right Bank” used handheld cameras,