The Hitch-Hiker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is well known that the actress Ida Lupino was a director as well. In the 1950s she avidly wanted to make an expert (if small) film noir and she did, not only directing but also co-writing the tale of a cruel, criminal hitchhiker (William Talman) who traverses the desert with the two sad-sack men he has kidnapped.
For a product of Old Hollywood, The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is impressively hard-nosed. Virtually no women appear in the film, part of what makes it emphatically masculine. And it isn’t dated. Have fun, ladies and gentlemen.
A terrific film noir produced in China, So Close to Paradise was made in the late Nineties, banned for three years by the Red government, and—hooray!—subsequently released in the U.S. It didn’t make me think of Forties and Fifties Hollywood, though, but rather of the lofty Euro film of Antonioni and lesser artists, what with its angst, its silence and its careful visuals. The “music” of the picture are the sounds of a tugboat, heavy rain, high heels on pavement and—well, sober tones. Lamentably, serious cutting was done by the Chinese studio, but filmmaker Wang Xiaoshunai‘s talent still shines through. The thin plot is quite digestible, and actress Wang Tong is lovely as she credibly plays a worldly nightclub singer.