Product Code Database
The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 American independent film film noir Thriller film directed by Ida Lupino, who co-wrote it with her former husband Collier Young, and starring Edmond O'Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy. Based on the 1950 killing spree of Billy Cook, the film follows two friends who are taken hostage by a serial murderer Hitchhiking during an automobile trip to Mexico.
The Hitch-Hiker was the first mainstream-released American film of its type directed by a woman. It was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." IDA LUPINO’S THE HITCH-HIKER (1953) FILM RESTORATION (1993 to 1997) on Vimeo (upload by Louis Antonelli, the person responsible for the restoration from 1993-1997)
In California, two friends, Roy Collins (O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Lovejoy), leave one evening on a planned fishing trip to San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. They cross the Mexico–United States border at Calexico-Mexicali and continue on through the night. They pick up Myers, who pulls a gun and holds them hostage. He forces them to drive him through the Baja California desert towards Santa Rosalía, Baja California Sur, where he plans to escape a police dragnet by taking a ferry across the Gulf of California to Guaymas. To avoid law enforcement, he orders the pair to drive at night.
Collins and Bowen comply. In Mexico, Myers sadistically terrorizes the pair—at one point forcing Bowen to shoot a tin can out of Collins' hand with a game rifle—and revels in the ineffective attempts by Mexican law enforcement to catch him using checkpoints. After a tense moment while buying food, they stop for the night. Collins and Bowen discuss their plans to escape, and agree that they must only act at the right time or they will be killed.
The next morning, the car radio fails, and Myers slugs Collins in the head for breaking it, so Bowen must drive. Meanwhile, police investigators learn the three are together and deduce where Myers is heading. At a gas station, Myers kills a dog, while Bowen leaves his wedding ring for the police to find. Overnight, Collins and Bowen attempt to escape, but Collins injures his ankle, and the pair are recaptured. As the police investigation proceeds, supervisors release false information to trick Myers, which seems to work. Later, when the car is damaged, Myers forces the group to continue on foot at gunpoint, and taunts them for missing opportunities to escape even if it would mean the other would be killed.
Collins, Bowen, and Myers reach Santa Rosalía and head to a bar, where Myers tries to conceal his identity and find an English speaking local. Learning the regular ferry to Guaymas has burned, Myers pays a fisherman to take him there instead. However, as the threesome prepare to leave, a local resident recognizes Myers and alerts the authorities, who deploy to catch him at the pier. After a shootout and scuffle, Myers is subdued and Collins and Bowen are freed unharmed.
Lupino interviewed the two prospectors whom Billy Cook had held hostage, and got releases from them and from Cook as well, so that she could integrate parts of Cook's life into the script. To appease the censors at the Hays Office, however, she reduced the number of deaths to three.
Lupino was a noted actress who began directing when Elmer Clifton got sick and couldn't finish Not Wanted for Filmakers Inc., the production company founded by Lupino and Young to make low-budget, issue-oriented movies. Lupino stepped in to finish the film and went on to direct her own projects. The Hitch-Hiker was her first hard-paced, fast-moving picture after four "women's" films about social issues.Hurd, Mary (2007). Women Directors & Their Films, pp. 9–13. Praeger, Westport, Connecticut.
The film is in the public domain.
The Philadelphia Inquirer said that "with nothing more than three able actors, a lot of rugged scenery and their own impressive talents as producers, authors and director, Collier Young and Ida Lupino have brewed a grim little chiller". The Inquirer critic praised the performances and said the film was "directed with masculine strength by the amazing Miss Lupino".
The New York Daily News gave the film three and a half of four stars, saying Lupino made "good and exciting use" of the real-life incident.
The New York Times called the film an "unrelenting but superficial study of abnormal psychology coupled with standard chase melodrama". Critic A. H. Weiler complimented the performances and Lupino's "brisk direction", but criticized the plot as excessively predictable.
The Detroit Free Press said that the film performed a public service by warning motorists about the dangers of picking up hitchhikers.
In 1992, critics Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver praised Lupino's use of shooting locations. They wrote, " The Hitch-Hikers desert locale, although not so graphically dark as a cityscape at night, isolates the protagonists in a milieu as uninviting and potentially deadly as any in film noir."Alain Silver, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, film noir analysis by Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver, page 130, 3rd edition, 1992. New York: The Overlook Press. .
In 2002 critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote,
In 2008 Time Out Film Guide wrote of the film,
In January 2014, a restored 35mm print was premiered by the Film Noir Foundation at Noir City 12 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. On April 6, 2014 The Hitch-Hiker was shown again at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Mary Ann Anderson author of The Making of The Hitch-Hiker appeared at this event.
As of 2021 held a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews.
Filming
The Hitch-Hiker went into independent film Screening American Independent Film - Google Booksn on June 24, 1952, and wrapped in late July. TCM Overview The director of photography was RKO Pictures regular Nicholas Musuraca.. Location shooting took place in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine and Big Pine, California. Working titles for the film were " The Difference" and " The Persuader".
Release
Box office
The Hitch-Hiker premiered in Boston on March 20, 1953, to little fanfare THE HITCH-HIKER RESTORATION INTRODUCTION WITH ROBERT CLARKE (1997) on Vimeo (uploaded by Louis Antonelli) and immediately went into general release. The film was marketed with the tagline: "When was the last time you invited death into your car?"
Reception
The picture received mixed contemporary reviews. Later reviews are consistently positive.
As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape ... in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino's best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker's eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart. Krewson, John. The A.V. Club, DVD review, March 29, 2002. Last accessed: June 12, 2024.
Absolutely assured in her creation of the bleak, noir atmosphere – whether in the claustrophobic confines of the car, or lost in the arid expanses of the desert – Lupino never relaxes the tension for one moment. Yet her emotional sensitivity is also upfront: charting the changes in the menaced men's relationship as they bicker about how to deal with their captor, stressing that only through friendship can they survive. Taut, tough, and entirely without macho-glorification, it's a gem, with first-class performances from its three protagonists, deftly characterised without resort to cliché. Time Out Film Guide . Film review, 2008. Last accessed: April 23, 2008.
See also
Sources
External links
Categories: 1953 Films, 1953 Crime Drama Films, American Black-and-white Films, American Crime Drama Films, American Road Movies, Crime Films Based On Actual Events, 1950s English-language Films, Film Noir, Films About Kidnapping, Films About Automobiles, Films Directed By Ida Lupino, Films Scored By Leith Stevens, Films Set In Mexico, Films About Hitchhiking, Rko Pictures Films, United States National Film Registry Films, 1950s American Films, American Independent Films, 1953 Independent Films, Articles Containing Video Clips, English-language Crime Drama Films
|
|
