All Slights Deserved

I wish I knew more about Ida Lupino, or at least had the time to research her career more thoroughly. I wasn't even aware until a few minutes ago that she was British by birth, and even trained as an actress  at RADA before heading to the States in the thirties. After working her way diligently through the ranks she progressed to more significant roles by the end of the decade, whereupon she began referring to herself with self-deprecation as "the poor man's Bette Davis". Perhaps her greatest legacy though was as a pioneering woman director whose modest output blazed a trail for future generations. After a handful of earlier issue-based pictures The Hitch-Hiker represented her first directorial foray into film noir, a genre she'd already graced in a number of films as an actress. It's a taut little thriller that utilises that mainstay of genre and exploitation cinema: the perils of travelling by car. I've touched upon this before, in relation to H...