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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.

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.

This was the first of Ida Lupino's magnificent efforts to use the power of the screen to tackle desperately important but socially taboo social issues between 1949 and 1953. Although Elmer Clifton is credited as director, he had a heart attack during production, and most of the film was directed by Ida Lupino herself, who also produced and co-wrote this powerful drama. It was her first directorial effort, was completely successful, and launched her brilliant directing career. The 'social films' which she made during this period dealt with unwed mothers (a totally taboo issue at that time), rape, physically handicapped people, and even the extraordinary subject of bigamy ('The Bigamist', 1953). Ida Lupino pulled no punches, she was right in there, and got straight to the point, with the most overwhelming scenes of intense drama. The choice of Sally Forrest for the lead in this film about an unwed mother was perfect. The feckless fellow she falls in love with is played by Leo Penn, father of Sean Penn, and the likeness of father and son is clear, but then so is the type of character played! Leo Penn is very good, and plays the piano extraordinarily well in the film, where he is an emotionally disturbed and embittered failed pianist (but Sally Forrest does not know that, as she is only 19 and thinks he is Vladimir Ashkenazy.) Keefe Brasselle is superb in the touching role of the man who loves Sally despite all, the 'really nice guy', from whom she must run away because she is 'fallen'. Younger people today may find all of this incomprehensible, but that shows how quickly everyone forgets. If we think the Muslims are strange for killing their daughters for falling in love, try 1950s America. It was only better in that they didn't actually kill them, they merely disowned them and left them on the streets. Lest we think we are morally superior, we should remember that Ida Lupino did not make her films for their shock value. She was no sensationalist. She was addressing serious social wrongs being done by the majority of the population to unfortunates who strayed, and she took her social compassion far enough actually to make a film about a perfectly nice man who merely happened to have two wives. Shocking? Well, how about the hypocrisy then: in Utah there are admitted to be thousands of practising polygamists. Where's the shock? If only Ida Lupino were with us now, what would she be showing us about ourselves? She was a heroic figure, and this film was merely the first of a series of dramas that will tear your heart out, if you have one.

The Wrong Rut (1949)

What a bizarre movie with a really strong female lead doing her best with an overly emotional part. The title alone is a goofy thing, meant to preach a little to the poor youth of the country who get pregnant out of "wedlock." The other title, "Not Wanted," has far more meaning and none of the insouciance.

There are two surprises to this tale of a young woman frustrated at home, meeting a man (a piano player, no surprise) and getting knocked up. The first is the leading female, Sally Forest, who has to run through a huge range of emotional situations, from giddy to superficial to terrified to worn out to enamored to simply being a heartbroken would-be mother. This is her first credited role in a movie, and she did appear in a number of decent early 1950s films (including one directed by Ida Lupino) before switching to t.v. (I have seen only "Mystery Street" which was quite good.)

The other surprise might a reason to either watch this film or run far and fast. It's a fifteen minute insert in badly faded (but once vivid) color of a C-section birth. It's clearly a medical short inserted, not relating to the plot, and it cuts in badly with in intertitle card and then is as gruesome as possible. Then it flips back to the nicely filmed black and white narrative, which is a huge relief. I found the documentary aspects interesting on some level, but was so put off by the apparent shock tactics of it I got a little miffed. The idea, it seemed to me, was to shock the young women in the audience, so they wouldn't dare get pregnant, since having a baby was really a cold, violent, bloody affair.

Of course, this has nothing to do with much here. We don't even know if Forest's character has a caesarian (we assume so, of course), and what about women in marriages who want their babies who have to have a caesarian for health reasons? Furthermore, why go along with the horrors of being pregnant at all, in this way? Did anyone mention condoms? It's just a crude painful propaganda piece, on some level.

And yet most of it is a pretty well made mini-drama, an hour long (minus the color insert), and quite well filmed and edited. You might enjoy it, but be forewarned.

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.