Madres solteras

A gripping drama of motherhood when complications without end set in. Sally has a relationship with an irresistible pianist, he actually plays quite well, but he is too occupied with his work and problems to be able to provide Sally with any proper support. He gets away, and Sally finds herself in the hands of a garage worker with a passion for toy railways. When she is pregnant from her former relationship, she runs away and ends up in a home for unwed mothers.

The film is mostly remarkable for being Ida Lupino's debut as a director, and at the time the subject was etremely sensitive and taboo and could not be discussed openly. This taboo situation has in an interesting way marked the film like in a haze of mystery, and you get insights in the lives of unwed mothers and their tough luck that shine with fascinating intimacy. This is a women's film about women made by a woman, and as such it is precious, to say the least.

Sally Forrest makes a tremendous performance, she is just a common woman, this part would have been ideal for Susan Hayward, and Sally actually reminds of her, but she is practically as good as Susan, with her weakness, her fits, her tensions and uncontrollable impulses, it's all perfectly real. The music is also quite good, and the piano scenes touch on great romanticism. It's a minor film, but the smallest jewels can sometimes be the most precious ones.

Ida Lupino was a very gifted actress, but unlike the vast majority of actresses in the Hollywood jungle, she was able to go toe to toe with any man for both direction and production. She was a wily, knowledgable veteran of film and film production, and had nothing but successes behind the camera (which, quite frankly, she had grown accustomed to with successes in front of it as well). The lead actress Sally Forest does an admirable job with an emotionally difficult role. The opportunities for Lupino to get preachy in this film were numerous, yet her careful hand kept an even keel on the flow of the film. One has to decide these issues for themselves. Is abortion right or wrong? Is taking a child to term right or wrong? Is giving up a child right or wrong? The answer is always the same. No one can say if any of these things are right or wrong; only the woman involved can make that decision. It is easy to spout platitudes when you do not have to live with them yourself. A very good film with sobering content.

This is the first of Ida Lupino's social conscience films that also includes Outrage (1950) and The Bigamist (1953). Here she deals with the problems that a wedlock baby presents to a young mother (Forrest). It's a topic studios at the time were loathe to touch because of the tricky moral implications. Fortunately, Lupino deals with the topic in realistic and affecting fashion, and from the girl's pov.

Forrest shines as Sally the wedlock mother. As the innocent young woman, Forrest has to act out the many changes in the unwed mother's life, which she does in sympathetic fashion. Then too, Forrest looks the everyday part, petite, pretty, but hardly glamorous. Her hollow look as she roams the forlorn city streets remains unforgettable. (Note the use of ordinary downtown locations as background that helps identify Sally as an everyday person. Then, for contrast, catch how Sally's abruptly thrust into an urban jail cell, which comes across like an urban shark tank.)

Still, I'm really impressed with Leo Penn as Steve the moody pianist who can't seem to find himself. Sally's enthralled with his tempestuous music that suggests a darkly romantic soul underneath. At first, Steve resists her too youthful advances. But then he succumbs, leaving her pregnant (a word never used). Note too how carefully that romantic night is finessed, a Code requirement for the time. Anyway, Steve's not so much a selfish villain as a lost soul. This is an interesting twist since it's really she who presses the relationship instead of the man. And even though he terminates it rather cruelly, Sally is really the author of her own situation. This first part is handled extremely well and in generally non-Hollywood fashion.

The second part involves Sally leaving home and trying to deal with independence in a new town, while coping with a pregnancy that only emerges over time. However, Keefe Brasselle's gas station owner, where she goes to work, smacks of Hollywood contrivance. In short, he's an attractive, idealized bachelor, which means from that point on, we know how the story will end. I guess that even for the gutsy Lupino, the offbeat could only go so far. This second part, though affecting, comes across more conventionally. For me, the high point comes in the unwed mothers home. There a real pathos emerges between Joan and Sally as they ponder what the future holds for them.

Still and all, it's unfortunate actress-producer-director Lupino never got her due from the industry. She should be remembered as a pioneering woman on the production end as well as also being a fine performer. Too bad her gutsy social conscience films, such as this, were ill-timed. As early TV took over popular viewing habits, audiences for these small b&w's dwindled, soon causing them to drift into obscurity. At the same time was the cultural chill set off by HUAC and the McCarthy hearings of the early 50's. As a result, flirtation with touchy topics like this one gave way to the safe entertainment of I Love Lucy and The Ten Commandments. At the same time, screenwriters such as Not Wanted's Paul Jarrico would be blacklisted.

Nonetheless, Outrage remains a sensitively affecting story with continuing relevance even to our own more free-wheeling day. It also remains a lasting tribute to the boldly enterprising Ida Lupino.

To dismiss Not Wanted (alternate title: Shame) as a dated glimpse into the socio-sexual mores of the bad old days is to forget how revolutionary it was. Ida Lupino – one of the first women to make the break from glamorous stardom into the male preserve of directing – co-wrote and co-produced this movie about what we would now call single motherhood but was then whispered about as illegitimacy. (Tellingly, though Lupino took a reportedly large hand in directing as well, she spurns the credit, leaving it to Elmer Clifton.)

Sally Forrest plays a scatterbrained young woman who can't even remember to bring home duct tape for the leak her dad's trying to fix or potatoes for mom's stew. She slings hash by day but at night dreams moonily of a lusher life, as represented by the hot piano-man at a night club (Leo Penn). She throws herself at him, and he catches (his flicked-away cigarette drifting slowly down a stream encodes their rapture). But, footloose and fancy-free, Penn packs up to try his luck in that provincial Paris, Capitol City. In a huff, Forrest packs up, too, and follows him there, only to be brutally blown off.

She takes a job as a gas jockey at a station managed by lame veteran Keefe Brasselle, but resists his tepid approaches at first (scant wonder: he plies her with his model trains.) But joining him at an amusement park, she swoons; a doctor called in diagnoses her as pregnant, much to her surprise. Without a word to her family back home or to Brasselle, she packs up yet again and checks herself into The Haven Hospital, a home for either (take your pick) unwed mothers or wayward girls. Much as she'd like to keep the baby, it's an unworkable option, so she grudgingly gives it up for adoption. But soon she's wandering the streets eyeing other women's babies a little too loonily. Next, the police are involved....

A more or less `happy' ending – undoubtedly the only condition under which the picture got made at all – can't compromise Not Wanted's unblinking look at what pregnancy without a wedding ring spelled for women who proved less than vigilant about their chastity. It's a compassionate (if melodramatic and sentimental) assault on a complacent mind-set that, disrupted by the exigencies of wartime, was striving to reassert itself (and strives still). Whatever else may be said about single parenthood, it's no longer a cause for scandal and indignation. Lupino can take at least a little of the credit for that.

Depending on how old you are, you will understand why this film is very unusual and a taboo subject for the year 1949 in which it was made. Ida Lupino, although not taking credit, basically directed this film about an unhappy girl who gets mixed up with a loser who gets her pregnant and then leaves her hanging. Since this isn't a taboo subject today in society's eyes, a lot of people will probably miss the whole point of the film. Lupino was a genius--an accomplished actress, a producer, writer and screenwriter and director. She made this film, I believe to bring attention to all sides of the story about an unwed mother not knowing what to do. In my book I rate this film highly.