Virtual Seminar: The Hitch-Hiker
When:
Thursday, Apr 23, 2020 8:00p -
9:00p
Thursday, Apr 23, 2020 8:00p -
9:00p
Where:
Coolidge Corner Theatre (online!)
290 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA 02446
Admission:
$10
Categories:
Classes, Film
Event website:
https://coolidge.org/events/seminar-hitch-hiker
Film critic Monica Castillo leads this online seminar on Ida Lupino's film noir classic.
Beyond its obvious cultural significance as the only classic film noir directed by a woman (actress Ida Lupino), The Hitch-Hiker is perhaps better remembered as simply one of the most nightmarish motion pictures of the 1950s. Inspired by the true-life murder spree of Billy Cook, The Hitch-Hiker is the tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who are held captive by a homicidal drifter (William Talman). He forces them, at gunpoint, to embark on a grim joyride across the Mexican desert.
Renegade filmmaking at its finest, The Hitch-Hiker was independently produced, which allowed Lupino and ex-husband/producer Collier Young to work from a treatment by blacklisted writer Daniel Mainwaring, and tackle an incident that was too brutal for the major studios to even consider.
Monica Castillo is a film critic whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, NPR, RogerEbert.com, Elle Magazine, The Wrap, and The Boston Globe, among others. She completed her master's at the University of Southern California as the school's first film critic fellow.