NFR Project: “Outrage”
Dir: Ida Lupino
Scr: Ida Lupino, Malvin Wald, Collier Young
Pho: Louis Clyde Stoumen, Archie Stout
Ed: Harvey Manger
Premiere: Oct. 14, 1950
75 min.
Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a force of nature. She was a member of a long-lived, illustrious English theatrical family, and went to Hollywood as an early age to work as an actress. She quickly found success in films such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), They Drive by Night (1940), and High Sierra (1941).
However, she wanted to do more. Learning about the job of directing as she continued to perform onscreen, she formed her own independent production company and began writing, producing, and directing low-budget films that focused on female protagonists dealing with contemporary problems. Her company, The Filmmakers Inc., created 12 films beginning in 1948. She directed six of them.
Outrage deals with rape and its consequences. Previously the subject had been tackled in mainstream American film only by Johnny Belinda (1948). Outrage starred Mala Powers, who had just been seen in Cyrano de Bergerac. In it, she plays Ann Walton, a young bookkeeper with plans for the future with her fiancé Jim.
She walks home alone one night. In a sequence shot in Expressionist style, she is stalked by a rapist, moving further and further into a nightmarish landscape of urban decay. Eventually, the man catches up to her and violates her (offscreen).
Her family, the police, and Jim all try to be supportive of her, but she feels guilty, that somehow she was responsible for her victimization. Paranoid, she thinks that everyone is staring at her and making comments about her. Lupino’s expert direction makes her impressions ambiguous – is she really an object of scorn, or is she just imagining it?
She abruptly leaves town on a bus, fleeing to Los Angeles to start a new life, she hopes. At a rest stop, she hears a radio report that everyone is looking for her. She leaves the bus, starts walking, and sprains her ankle. Lying pprone by the side of the road, she is picked up by a sympathetic and handsome minister, Bruce, who takes her to a nearby farm where she can find lodging and a job.
She changes her name and recovers slowly. Then, she attends a country dance where she is glommed onto by a horny male. He pushes her around, pins her down, tries to force himself on her. She nails him in the head with a handy pipe wrench.
She is put on trial. Bruce finds out about her earlier rape, and convinces the judge to commute her sentence. She spends a year under psychiatric supervision instead.
Ann is strongly attracted to Bruce, but he encourages her to return to her home and to Jim. She eventually agrees and leaves Bruce to his own musings.
The movie is as realistic as the censorial strictures of the time allow. The movie respects Ann and doesn’t trivialize her trauma. We see her go through a rocky process of healing, into a new and integrated sense of self. This kind of awareness was sorely lacking in films of the period. Lupino pushed for real-life stories about people with real-life problems, complex psyches, and ambiguous outcomes.
Lupino’s reputation has grown over the past few decades, and today she is seen as an essential proto-feminist filmmaker.
The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Cinderella.


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