Outrage (Web Exclusive)
Reviewed by Karen Backstein

Produced by Collier Young; directed by Ida Lupino; screenplay by Collier Young, Malvin Wald, and Ida Lupino; cinematography by Archie Stout; edited by Harvey Manger; production design by Harry Horner; music by Paul Sawtell; starring Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, and Robert Clarke. Blu-ray, B&W, 75 min., 1950. A Kino Lorber release.

In this age of #MeToo and more prominent women’s voices, when Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman (1975) topped Sight and Sound’s latest list of the 100 Best Films of All Time, the Blu-ray release of Ida Lupino’s Outrage (1950) seems as modern as today and more than timely. With its intense examination of the emotional and psychological aftereffects of rape, and the silence imposed on the victim (including by herself), Ida Lupino’s seminal work differs from any other film made during that era. Unlike Johnny Belinda (1948), which closely preceded it, Outrage features a protagonist who could be any woman, not someone separated from the norm and made vulnerable by a disability. She’s strong, intelligent, with a job, and with both a fiancé and family that, on the surface, seem loving and supportive, including a father who, in very non-1950s fashion, wishes she’d hold off marriage to further her education. Nor does Lupino depict the character as flirty, or as sending mixed messages that might in any way “justify” the attack. Outrage explodes the idea that, somehow, “she asked for it”; even the title conjures up the flaming-hot fury a wronged victim feels against her abuser. 

While walking home late one evening after work, Ann Walton (Mala Powers), a bookkeeper, gradually realizes that she’s being followed. (The pursuer is a man we’ve seen at the concession stand earlier who flirted with her to no avail, unnamed throughout, and whom Ann fails to recognize.) An extended game of cat-and-mouse ensues as Ann attempts to hide amid the buildings and vehicles. Clinging to walls and running through alleyways, she calls out, bangs on doors, tries to hail a passing cab, and desperately attempts to get someone’s attention. But her screams go unanswered. The one car she sees zooms by, oblivious. A man who thinks he might have heard something opens the window, but he soon retreats inside again. Ann’s efforts to run result only in her being cornered with no escape as her stalker gets closer and closer. While we see the shadow of her assailant, Lupino refrains from showing any of the actual rape. Instead, we simply watch as Ann later returns home disheveled, moving slowly and heavily.

It’s an extended and suspenseful sequence, where hopes get raised and then quickly dashed, as well as a triumph of sound and mise en scène. No diegetic music guides our emotions, other than Ann’s happy whistle as she exits the office, and thereafter we hear only the sounds we might hear in reality—running steps, shouts, stumbles in the dark. Trucks and machinery dominate some shots, while one alleyway is plastered with circus posters. Every image makes a statement, be it a long shot with depth and graphic power or a close-up that packs an emotional punch.

In the aftermath of the assault, Ann feels claustrophobic and under a microscope—the subject of everyone’s gossip, sideways glances, and prurient curiosity. In response, she flees home and ends up in a small town where a sympathetic clergyman, Reverend Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), helps her establish a new life with a kindly family. But then a man insistently pursues her as she wanders away from a local fair, and in what would now be recognized as PTSD, Ann confuses him with her rapist and violently attacks him. The reverend decides to delve into Ann’s motivations for the violence and help her as she goes to trial. 

Short and tightly constructed at a mere seventy-five minutes, the B-film budget only increases the film’s power. The gloomy black-and-white film noir photography, multiple motifs of jail-like bars, and the close emphasis on Ann’s anger and humiliation heighten the sense of her fear, dread, and oppression. And, like certain noirs, it contrasts Ann’s suburban home with a bucolic country landscape only to demolish the difference when another potential rapist emerges. For a woman, no place is a safe space. 

Even before the story proper starts, the credits draw the spectator into the heart of the film: from the back, a still-unknown woman walks ever-so-slowly through a quintessential dark street, shot through with slashes of light from a streetlamp. Then she begins to run, faster and faster, away from the camera and down into the depth of the empty avenue. Ominous music plays over this opening, which captures a moment that occurs sometime after the film’s beginning. A cut, abetted by the sound of a sharp whistle, then takes us to a man serving coffee from a counter during lunchtime; Ann, bright and energetic, grabs a cup, ignoring provocative comments from the server. (Notably, the cut from the credits to the first scene links Ann’s running to the server, who will be her assailant.) 

This scene introduces a major trope in Outrage: the idea of constantly being watched, which assumes various forms as the narrative develops. But the two most significant acts of voyeurism appear immediately: first, the male gaze, in the form of the future rapist, fixed intently on this female object of desire that he intends to capture. Second, the female gaze, which exerts its own kind of control through judgment rather than outright violence. Prior to the rape, it’s embodied by an old woman sitting by Ann and her fiancé, Jim Owens (Robert Clarke), as they lunch outside. Initially, the woman is simply part of a complex and active grouping around the circular bench on which Ann and Jim sit. But later, the woman stares openly and continually at the couple, her thoughts inscrutable: is she touched by young love? Disapproving? Even the close-ups Lupino keeps returning to don’t make it clear. As Ann and Jim are about to kiss, Ann notices that the woman is still observing them, and stops the embrace instantly, and the two return to eating their sandwiches. This sense of surveillance deepens and darkens after the attack, as, in a signature image, female neighbors and colleagues repeatedly lean their heads close together as Ann enters a space or passes by, whispering to each other and surreptitiously stealing glances. (The men, by contrast, pityingly touch her—just what Ann does not want.) 

Important, too, are Lupino’s nuanced, complex portrayals of male behavior. She does not establish a clear and certain boundary with good men on one side and bad ones on the other, but a continuum. While the rapist stands as the most violent, the film subtly explores the gradations of hostility and entitlement by male characters, some deemed acceptable, even understandable, by society. In the astounding and lengthy central sequence when Ann becomes terrified by Frank, the local man she will nearly kill, his face dissolves and becomes that of the rapist’s in an unnervingly extreme close-up. While Reverend Ferguson assures Ann that Frank “would never have hurt her,” what we see instead is a man who touches Ann against her will, follows her until she is isolated, and invades her space. Most women spectators will share Ann’s perception of Frank as threatening and recognize that he and the rapist have more in common than Ferguson can admit or realize. Even Jim, Ann’s supposedly “understanding” fiancé, displays a level of rage when Ann says she can no longer marry him. Insistent they should wed immediately, he shouts at her, chases her to her door, grabs her roughly, shakes her. He, Frank, the rapist: each one feels he deserves to get what he wants. 

Outrage, unlike the men it depicts, makes Ann’s subjectivity the center of interest, focusing almost entirely on the emotional repercussions of rape on the victim. Visually, shots emphasize her reactions, images enhance and illustrate her interior monologue, and the mise en scène externalizes her emotions, projecting them into the space. Her parents’ home seems almost stereotypically warm and welcoming when we first see it with its framed photos, knick-knacks, and wallpaper. Before she leaves, however, her point of view fixates on two items: a communion photo of herself, which she smashes, and an empty rocking chair, a symbol of coziness that represents her loss of comfort in the home. Narratively, even as the second half of the film follows the development of Ann’s relationship with Bruce, it also becomes a psychological mystery, rather than a crime-solving saga, as he tries to uncover Ann’s history and help her heal. 

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray, beautifully remastered from a 4K scan of the 35mm print, fully reveals Lupino’s directorial style, the skillful construction of each image and camera movement, and the strong performances by relative newcomers. The only significant supplementary feature on the disc is a commentary track by film historian Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City. Smith’s wide-ranging commentary discusses Lupino’s background, biography, filmography, directorial signatures, and feminism; the film’s themes and visual motifs; and the characterizations, particularly Ann’s desire not to be seen and the way she “turns herself into a fugitive” when fleeing home, changing her name and becoming fearful of police. She delves into the film’s controversial reception—Outrage was initially not very successful—and the film’s marketing and publicity. 

At times, however, what are meant to be informal observations (“I, for one, am through with this character”) don’t quite work with Smith’s otherwise informed critical perspective, and I do have a quibble with her referring to certain shots as looking at Ann from the rapist’s point of view. In fact, interestingly, Lupino shoots Ann from behind the rapist, letting us know that he’s eyeing her, but not quite giving us his point of view. It’s a subtle but meaningful difference. She also refers to the film’s conclusion as “disappointing” because of the way Ann presumably will be reabsorbed into her old life. I see it as more ambiguous, open-ended; Lupino withholds so much in that finale that we cannot be sure what will happen, despite us being told. In a way, she avoids either one of the two potential and stereotypical happy endings, leaving us with something mysterious, thought-provoking, and emotionally lingering.

Karen Backstein is a writer and independent scholar who has taught cinema studies at various New York-area universities.

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Cineaste, Vol. XLIX, No. 1