Harry (Edmond O'Brien) and Eve Graham (Joan Fontaine) want to adopt a child, as Eve is infertile. [7], https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Bigamist_(1953_film)&oldid=1015524675, Pages using infobox film with unknown empty parameters, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 1 April 2021, at 23:44. 80 min Travelling salesman Harry Graham (O’Brien) and his business partner/wife Eve (Fontaine) want to adopt a child. Jane Fonda, Thierry Fremaux, Alexander Payne and Illustrious Others at the Film Restoration Summit. The Bigamist has been cited as the first American feature film in which the female star of a film directed herself. [6], Leonard Maltin gave it a three-star rating, calling it "one of Lupino's best directorial efforts". | Upon learning of Eve's infertility, Harry had suggested that she join him in his business as means of coping with her disappointment. Ida Lupino in The Bigamist, a taut, muscular, controlled picture. It stars Lupino herself with Edmund O'Brien, Joan Fontaine, Edmund Gwenn and Kenneth Tobey. Edmond O’Brien’s Harry Graham taking the adoption agency man through his path to infidelity is one of the most well distilled examples of an unreliable narrator I have come across; with everything presented as eminently reasonable, almost inevitable that such a put-upon man could make a mistake and fuck a … Classic movie, 1953. Though she'd done well at work, she soon began to focus solely on the business, leaving Harry feeling lonely for an emotional spousal connection. In its portrayal of Harry's 'double life', the film takes on a double life of its own, hovering as it does between two genres. Mr Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) has to travel to LA to do a background check on Harry Graham (Edmond O'Brien). Features . 1 hr 19 mins. But, as embodied by that perpetually pressured everyman of the... Read more . The Bigamist is directed by Ida Lupino and adapted to screenplay by Collier Young from a story by Larry Marcus and Lou Schor. I own nothing. The Bigamist contains very low-key filmmaking compared to the other movies in the "Ida Lupino--Queen of the B's" video series. The title character is Edmond O'Brien, a lonely travelling salesman who ends up married to two women, Eve (Joan Fontaine)--and Phyllis ().Eventually, of course, the truth comes out. During the day, she scrubs floors and sings of her lost love. [3] The plot cheekily mines aspects of Lupino’s own private life (sharing same scriptwriting husband with Fontaine; an extramarital pregnancy with Duff) and showcases the Hollywood homes of some of her friends on a see-the-stars bus-tour. Photograph: Allstar/The Filmmakers Chris Fujiwara calls it a "haunting film" which is "one of several out-of-nowhere masterpieces" to be directed by Lupino. He was overjoyed to find that this time Eve was fully receptive. Jordan a prolific bigamist turned out to have fathered at least 13 children with six women. Eve returns to their home in San Francisco as Harry is about to meet the police who are waiting for him there. And with regard to Harry's personal life, "it won't be a question of which woman he'll go back to, but rather which woman will take him back." ‘The Bigamist’ does the same with a lesser crime, showing how an apparently good, hard-working man like Harry can drift into a double life entirely built on lies. Talking on the phone with Eve that night, Harry tried to tell her everything about Phyllis and about his loneliness, but Eve was interested only in talking about business. You have to marry more than one person. This will NOT work if you are a widow and you are married to someone else. 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