Portland Women's Film Festival 2009

Director Ida Lupino’s acclaimed 1953 film, “The Bigamist”, is a thoughtful drama about a man divided between two wives: an infertile upper-crust career woman (staid Joan Fontaine), and a tough-talking working-class waitress (Lupino herself, in fine form). Edmond O'Brien stars as the salesman whose secret life threatens to implode under the weight of its own contradictions. The film is a dissection of '50s masculinity and study of male passivity anchored by O'Brien's self-searching voiceover. The film clearly illuminates the limited roles available to women in the context of postwar America.