搭便车的人

Possibly the only female director working under the stricture of studio system of Hollywood’s Golden Age, actress-turned-moviemaker Ida Lupino has two pictures released in 1953 (soon her production company would close up shop and she would only direct one more picture in 1965), both grittily tackles the thorny, contentious maladies of American society at large.

THE BIGAMIST is a moral conundrum, San Franciscan couple Harry Graham (O’Brien) and Eve’s (Fontaine) conjugal harmony begins to crumble after they they find out Eve is infertile, turning her disappointment into business-driving entrepreneurship, Eve distances both emotionally and physically from Harry, who feels excruciatingly lonesome when on his business days in L.A, where he meets Phyllis Martin (Lupino), a waitress he finds rather sympathetic.

Collier Young’s script (yes, he is also the producer, Lupino’s ex-husband and Fontaine’s current hubby, talking about in-jokes and self-reference!) eminently portrays Phyllis as an independent-thinking, no-string-attached sweetheart that even a decent man like Harry cannot resist her blunt, unsentimental spell, “I don’t want anything from you.” is Phyllis’ opening remark. Therefore, in order to validate that Harry and Phyllis’ reluctant union (after Phyllis has a bun in the oven) is out of unalloyed mutual love, Eve has to take the short stick on account of her distancing maneuvers, sheer insouciance when Harry mentionsto her his first encounter with Phyllis on a Hollywood tour bus. Eventually, it is Eve’s belated decision to adopt a baby that puts Harry’s double life on a line, when a diligent adoption agent Mr. Jordan (Gwenn) is keen on getting to the bottom of it.

While the narrative gains on a typical melodrama, Lupino the director refrains from performative hyperbole and swelling music to elicit audience’s sensorial response, instead she adopts a matter-of-fact tenet to map onto the triad’s mental trajectories with admirable exactitude, with O’Brien strenuously carrying off Harry’s beset disquietude and Lupino herself, playing pitch-perfect notes of Phyllis’ fragile brave face. THE BIGAMIST is a searing drama but its intensity is not exterior but interior.

THE HITCH-HIKER, released 9 months before THE BIGAMIST, is a taut all-hombre film-noir based on the lurid true story of a psychopathic hitch-hiker on a killing spree, a polarized remove from Lupino’s woman-issue B pictures she has cranked out since 1949.

Two ordinary men Roy Collins and Gilbert Bowen (O’Brien and Lovejoy) are heading to a fishing trip in Mexico, but incur a hostage to fortune after picking up Emmett Myers (Talman), who, at the drop of a hat, points a pistol at them. Coerced to do Myers’ bidding, the two friends come in for psychological and physical torment while they traverse through the expansive, often barren terrain in the heart of the Baja California Peninsula (Lupino and her team make great play of extensive location shootings that renders the pair’s noir-ish nightmare melt under the sweltering sun).

Talman, with one “bum eye” whose eyelid cannot be closed on a chilling, odiously smug mug, makes for an excellent villain and unregenerately spouts Myers’ venomous affronts one after another, letting his baseness and slyness get the better of the hapless duo, who are the essential salt-of-the-earth type, driven to crack under mounting pressure (O’Brien’s Collins is the one who almost loses it and Lovejoy’s Bowne is more resilient, patient and astute).

If Lupino really enters into the spirit by building up the tension and confrontation, THE HITCH-HIKER’s finale somewhat sags when the inevitable comeuppance transpires patly, elicits a bathetic feeling, why the heck they couldn’t act sooner to end their protracted misery?

Showing her laudable proficiency in molding two disparate pictures, Lupino’s singular case only woefully reminds us gender is never an issue in movie business’ division of labor. Ergo today, collectively and unflaggingly we should welcome women and members of the minorities into all the tiers of the moviemaking edifice, just for the sake of putting it to rights, since the century-long accumulated debts are plain outrageous.

referential entries: Byron Haskin’s TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949, 6.7/10); Alfred Hitchcock’s SUSPICION (1941, 7.6/10).

不该因为这是第一部由女性导演执导的黑色电影，就认为它价值连城。没有比这更加“政治正确”的愚蠢了。评价一部电影，首先看的是电影本身的质量，然后才是关注导演、演员等构成一部电影必备的元素。难道不是吗？

可以想象，如果这是一部男性导演的作品，甚至不太有可能流传到今天。它被“吹捧”，更多因为后世附加的“女权主义”。如果艾达·卢皮诺在世时知道此点，她可能也会感到震惊。这说明政治站位已经荒谬到危害电影评论。

之所以这么讲，是因为《搭便车的人》的故事简单到无趣。两个普通男性因为搭载连环杀手而被推向死亡边缘，电影一边呈现三人坐车在公路上奔驰的画面，一边补述警察追捕罪犯的过程。最后警察追到了杀手，电影结束。

不仅文本不行，影像也不行。这样一部电影到底有什么可看价值呢？反正我是看不出什么名堂。除了同样是我给艾达·卢皮诺补缀的一束光环——在这部全员男性的电影里，确实存在某种程度上可以揭示男权社会本质的佐证。

杀手仅仅通过一把枪，便让两个强壮的男人乖乖听命，这说明了什么？这是否可以被认为是男权社会制度不只是男性压迫女性的事实，同样也是有权力的男性压迫无权力的男性的事实？看来，男权社会的本质是“权”，而非“男”。

之所以一提到男权社会或父权制，便联想到男性欺负女性的画面，仅仅因为在现实生活中，普遍存在的状况是男性比女性更强。那么底层男性呢，他们受到的压迫不会比女性少。还有处于上层的女性，同样会压迫下层女性。

这说明了父权制是由权力关系建构起来的，通过权力的大小将人分出金字塔式的层级，以此来维系社会的稳定运作。不过这是艾达·卢皮诺想在电影里表达的吗？当然不是。这是我为艾达·卢皮诺女权主义先驱标签找到的伪证。