THE BIGAMIST (1953)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Ida Lupino

Cast: Edmund O’Brien / Joan Fontaine / Ida Lupino

Plot

A traveling salesman juggles two wives in two cities until an investigation by an adoption agency forces him to come clean.

What I Liked

*spoiler alert*

Another one of those deviously subversive jabs at the wholesome image of suburbia in 1950s America, “The Bigamist” dares to infiltrate the sacred confines of marriage with the seediness and distrust of film noir.  Directed by actress Ida Lupino (who also plays Phillys, the second wife) at a time when movies were creatively dominated by men, the movie provides a frank and rare portrait of the insecurities and hypocrisies of men, exemplified by Harry Graham, a husband so turned off by his wife’s becoming a career woman that he goes so far as to attempt to pick up strange women on tour busses.  Yet, even when he’s successful at this, he remains pathetically indecisive, reluctant to even kiss the other woman and yet also unwilling to quit seeing her and return to his wife.  When he finally does have sex with the other woman, he isn’t even man enough to break things off with his wife, or even tell her about the affair.  When Phyllis becomes pregnant, he marries her, without even letting on that he is already married.  As Harry recounts all of this to an adoption agency worker who has finally outed him, he comes off as a complete wimp, wallowing in self-pity and acting as though he never had any choice but to do exactly as he is.

The irony is that Harry’s plight is understandable for a man of his era, his decisions constantly guided by the conflicting values of a time when people were expected to strive for the utmost normalcy.  When the mask of that misguided concept of normalcy shows cracks (the inability to conceive a child; a career woman for a wife) begin to appear, Harry winds up betraying the charade altogether and loses his identity altogether.  In another interesting twist on the American dream, this time one constantly perpetuated by Hollywood in these days, the film ends not with a classic happy ending, but instead with a a musing by a judge on guilt and punishment.

The fact that Mr. Jordan so avidly pries into Graham’s private life based on nothing more than an uneasy feeling about Graham might have been an all-too-recognizable bit of political commentary might have been an all too familiar bit of political commentary during the height of McCarthyism.

What I Didn’t Like

My source book compares Lupino’s use of simplicity and understated acting (for example, the sideways glances and avoidance of eye contact between characters) to the work of innovative silent era director Carl Theodor Dreyer.  Honestly, I don’t see it.  Dreyer’s films have a much more intense emotionality matched with the cinematic style of a visionary.  Lupino’s film, while it has its moments of subtle moodiness, amounts to nothing more than a relationship drama draped with the compelling shadows of noir style and social relevance.  It never once approaches Dreyer.

Most Memorable Scene

The tour bus scene is a fascinating few minutes of both characterization and social commentary.  A man whose marriage has failed to attain the ideal he desires, also fails at flirting with another woman, all while they and others tour Beverly Hills, gawking at the homes of the very people whose on-screen perfection they have all failed to achieve (Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Edmund Gwenn, etc.).

My Rating: 3 out of 5