Bigamist (1953) [VHS]
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Product details
Actor: Jane Darwell, Joan Fontaine, John Brown, Kem Dibbs, Matt DennisPrimary Contributor: Joan Fontaine
Edition: VHS Tape
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 80 minutes
Release Date: 1998-11-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Kino Video
Studio: Kino Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Bigamist (1953) [VHS]
Movie Review: Lupino's best, a downbeat melodrama of loneliness worthy of Sirk
Summary: 5 Stars
Ida Lupino's second 1953 directorial effort (her first was the nightmarish road-movie/film-noir "The Hitch-hiker") is at first glance an entirely different affair -- pun intended -- charting the investigation of San Francisco adoption agent Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) into the background of a childless couple who wish to become parents, Harry and Eve Graham (Joan Fontaine and Edmond O'Brien). For the first couple of reels, the investigation is the story, as Jordan discovers several rather suspicious items about the husband, a traveling salesman who makes quite regular trips to Los Angeles. Suspecting that all is not as it seems, Jordan eventually follows Graham to L.A. and discovers that he goes under a different name, and doesn't seem to register at any of the typical hotels. We know from the title what is going to happen, and sure enough when Jordan tracks Graham to a small house out in the suburbs, a baby cries, and Graham's big lie unravels....
Yes, Graham has another wife, Phyllis Martin (Ida Lupino), a waitress and the mother of his baby boy. He admits it all to Jordan, admits that he fell in love with Martin because she offered something that his career-woman wife and partner Eve could not -- real love, need, romance. Most of the rest of the film is a flashback, detailing the last year or so of Graham's life; probably the best part of the film lies in the next couple of reels, O'Brien showing real pathos as the lonely husband, the romantic and would-be lover whose marriage has become a business arrangement, wandering a large and unfriendly, alien city -- Lupino does a beautiful job of conveying the desolation and unfriendliness of Los Angeles -- and finally striking up a tentative friendship and would-be romance with a tart-mouthed waitress from Pennsylvania who's still dreaming of a better life. Eventually that friendship becomes a one-night stand on Graham's birthday that results in the unexpected, but not unwanted child, and when back in San Francisco Eve decides to finally look into adopting after 8 years of childlessness, Graham realizes that difficult choices are closing in, though he avoids them until caught.
What's most striking about The Bigamist to me is how it avoids taking an easy way out, avoids making any of the characters into villains or clich?s, though Fontaine's Eve is a little scantily fleshed out and is probably the least likable character of the trio; the film really comes off as an indictment of the career and capitalist-based world, of the conflicts between money and real joy that we face in this society, and it nearly achieves mastery in its exploration of these themes through the great location work and fine acting (especially by O'Brien) -- until a weak and fairly slapdash moralizing courtroom ending which boils it down all too simply. Still, for the most part this is a beautifully worked out look at the challenges people face alone and together, and a bravely realistic portrait of a crime that was barely talked about in an era where even divorce was often taboo. Though I haven't yet seen all of her films, I suspect this is Lupino's best; and though stylistically it couldn't be more different, in theme and feeling it is rivaled in its era in American film only by Douglas Sirk. Kino VHS rental.
Movie Review: Making bigamy rather pedestrian
Summary: 3 Stars
Ida Lupino, best known as a pragmatic, sensible, appealing actress of the 30s - 50s, usually playing tough but kind-hearted, hard-luck characters--HIGH SIERRA, ON DANGEROUS GROUND--was also a producer and an independent filmmaker. She acted in and directed a lot of TV too, into the 1970s. The half-dozen films she directed were mostly dramas, often about "controversial" subjects. THE BIGAMIST takes a rather stolid Edmund O'Brien, married to a supremely self-confident and classy Joan Fontaine in San Francisco, and since O'Brien is a traveling salesman whose job takes him frequently to Los Angeles, one thing leads to another and he pairs up with with working-class Ida Lupino in LA. THE BIGAMIST sets out to try to understand this ordinary hero who ends up married to two women. Sounds fascinating, and the film has a star cast: why is it such a dull experience, then?Movie Review: black and white movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I REALLY ENJOYED THIS MOVIE. IDA LAPINO WAS VERY GOOD. SHE ALSO DIRECTED.
A MAN ENDS UP MARRYING TWO WOMEN AND GOES TO JAIL FOR IT.
THIS WAS AN ALPHA MOVIE AND I SWORE I WOULD NEVER BUY ANOTHER ONE, BUT I REALLY WANTED THIS ONE. THE PICTURE IS POOR AND THE SOUND IS UNEVEN. BUT THE PRICE WAS RIGHT.
Movie Review: Poor Harry.
Summary: 4 Stars
What he didn't realize that in 1953 you couldn't fall in love with two women at the same time. He did anyway. He surely did know you can't be married to two women at the same time. He lived in San Francisco & his marriage had become as frosty as his business. He sold deep freezes.
Wife #1 of eight years, Eva was barren & had thrown herself into the business, neglecting Harry. On his weekly business trip to Los Angeles, Harry meets & becomes involved with Phyllis. In an effort to revive their marriage Eva & Harry decide to adopt. Eva undergoes an attitude adjustment & their relationship improves. Unfortunately, Phyllis proves to be be very fecund. Because he loves her, Phyllis becomes wife #2. In an immodest amount of time, she has a baby. The movie implied to me that it would have been better had Harry merely kept Phyllis as a mistress. But because he tried to be a decent guy he got busted. It's a most heinous crime & justice (?) will be severe. Ida Lupino serves double duty here & she's one excellent director. Her acting as Phyllis is very good as is Joan Fontaine as Eva. But the best perfromamce is Edmund O'Brien as Harry. He really shows some acting chops in this one. Ida Lupino had not gotten the recognition she deserved as the fine director she was in her own time. She is getting a little now belatedly, thanks to TCM.
Movie Review: Who Knew?
Summary: 5 Stars
Did you know that back in the 1950s you could be sentenced to life in prison for bigamy? I didn't either. I mean, I'm not saying that you should be married to two women at once, but life in prison seems like a fairly harsh penalty. Anyway, that's all beside the point. What this film is about is a bigamist who gets the chance to explain to a judge exactly why he needed to be maried to two women. It's very much a product of his time and he's able to show that it is actually his first wife's fault that's he's married twice. Yet, the ending is very, very romantic and I liked it.
Summary of Bigamist (1953) [VHS]
Edmund O'Brien, the soft, sweaty Everyman of so much early-'50s film noir, is cast as a sympathetic bigamist in Ida Lupino's 1953 film; a traveling salesman married to a frigid Joan Fontaine in San Francisco, he lets his loneliness lead him into a Los Angeles relationship with a hard-boiled waitress (Lupino, directing herself to one of her definitive damaged-goods performances). Hollywood's only significant woman filmmaker of the '50s, Lupino scrutinized and often criticized the sexual stereotypes of her time, and O'Brien is no moustache-twirling predator but a fundamentally decent man trapped by his own sense of responsibility. The on-the-fly, location shooting offers a hyperrealistic, street-level depiction of the seamy side of Los Angeles, epitomized by the hideous Chinese restaurant in which Lupino works, while Fontaine is positioned in an artificial soundstage world of penthouses and boardrooms. Defiantly violating any number of social taboos, The Bigamist is sensitive, meticulous filmmaking from a neglected master. --Dave KehrClassics Video
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