The Hitch-Hiker: Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino's The Hitch-hiker is a film as audacious as it is brilliant; a tight, taut, high-concept film noir that is relentlessly suspenseful and nerve-racking. Based on a true story, the film follows two men on a fishing trip who pick up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a murderous psychopath on the lam. He immediately takes the two men hostage with a revolver and orders them to take him to Mexico so he can escape the authorities. For the entire trip the murderer, named Emmett Myers, takes a childish glee in mocking, abusing, and psychologically torturing the two men. He is one of the great villainous creations of film noir. Indeed, he is practically a spoiled child: when the two men outsmart him, he is frantic and horrified, but when he inevitably gets the upper hand again, he acts like it was all part of the plan and trumpets himself as a mastermind. His demeanor towards his victims practically bespeaks arrogant insouciance. Unlike many other film noir, Lupino fills her film with bright, open spaces instead of dark, urban ones. But Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography manages to make the film's environment seem no less threatening and sinister. I do have one complaint: there are occasional scenes that grind the movie to a halt where we see a clean-cut, chiseled policeman review facts of the case. Even though they happen so fast you might miss them completely, these scenes nevertheless hamper the film's narrative. Why does the film have to spoon-feed us information from a third party? What sets The Hitch-hiker apart from so many film noir is its relatively few set-pieces, only a couple of actors, and an emphasis on the psychological torment felt by the two hostages. Why couldn't the entire film have been told from the point of view of the hostages? Why couldn't we as the audience have learned about Emmett in the same manner that the hostages did, mainly via brief radio broadcasts? One can't help but think of Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) which told its story exclusively from its protagonist's viewpoint. We knew only what Jake Gittes knew and every discovery he made during his investigation was as much a revelation for the audience as it was a revelation for him. But despite this lapse, The Hitch-hiker is no less essential a piece of filmmaking.

9/10