Cropped screenshot of Ida Lupino from the trailer for the film The Hard Way Further cropped from Image:Ida Lupino in The Hard Way trailer.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The print I saw (on DVD) of Ida Lupino‘s The Young Lovers (1949) is so technically deficient it seems ready to come apart at the seams.  The audio, for example, is often lousy.  As for the movie, it is a nicely serious love story in which the girl (Sally Forrest), a dancer, contracts polio.  The guy (Keefe Brasselle), also a dancer, doesn’t—but he truly loves the girl.  He has to eat, though, so he leaves for Las Vegas.

Herself afflicted with polio as a child, Lupino was a genuine creative force.  Not only did she direct The Young Lovers, she also produced and, with Collier Young, wrote it.  Likewise with other films.  The movie in question, however, is pretty pedestrian and sometimes overwrought.  But, again, it is nicely serious and thus manages to be watchable.

Also called Never Fear (a crummy title).