7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
Inspired by the true-life murder spree of Billy Cook, The Hitch-Hiker is a tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip who are held captive by a homicidal drifter who forces them, at gunpoint, to embark on a grim joyride across the Mexican desert.
Starring: Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman, José Torvay, Sam HayesFilm-Noir | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The history of female directors in pre-1960s Hollywood is slim. From the late 1920s to the early '40s, the only woman helming films in town was Dorothy Arzner, who made her name directing Clara Bow in her first talkie, The Wild Party, an all-girls-school drama with sapphic undertones. After Arzner stopped directing in 1943, it would be seven years before another woman got behind the camera of a mainstream movie. (Though there were certainly others, like Maya Deren, working in underground, independent cinema.) Suspended by Columbia Pictures for turning down a role, English actress Ida Lupino—who had appeared in over forty films since 1931, including High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart—formed a production company with her husband and turned to directing, initially making low-budget films about women's social issues, like the unwed-mother melodrama Not Wanted and Outrage, which controversially explored the emotional aftereffects of rape. Her most celebrated effort is 1953's The Hitch-Hiker, which is generally cited as the first film noir by a woman. While it's not a conventional noir, per se, in that it lacks many of the genre's visual/thematic touchstones—no femme fatale, for instance—it does crackle with suspense, following a deranged psychopath hitchhiking on a cross-country killing spree.
The Hitch-Hiker
I hate to keep repeating myself, but Kino-Lorber really has settled into a routine way of treating these Kino Classics titles—and their Redemption Films releases—procuring the best prints available, scanning them in high definition, doing some minor color corrections, and then presenting them essentially as-is, without extensive digital cleanup or filtering. Print damage is occasionally visible, then—and in The Hitch-Hiker it amounts to some brief scratches and white specks—but on the plus side, the image looks absolutely filmic, with natural grain structure intact. There's no digital noise reduction here, no obvious edge enhancement or other unnecessary forms of boosting, and no compression issues either. Though you may not get the wow-factor that comes with, say, a lot of Criterion Collection releases—which have been digitally cleaned up without being de-noised—Kino's titles do look true to source. The Hitch-Hiker's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer is consistent, and the picture reveals a lot of fine detail that would simply be undistinguishable in standard definition. Likewise, the black and white grading is balanced and never problematic. (No overblown whites or crushed-to- oblivion blacks.) If you can accept Kino's methodology, there are really no complaints to be made here.
The Hitch-Hiker features an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mono track that's fairly typical for a low-budget B-movie from this era. There are some age-related crackles and the occasional low hiss, but nothing distracting or harsh. The one oddity is that there are a few quick moments when William Talman's voice sounds really obviously dubbed-in after the fact, lower and more muffled than the surrounding dialogue. Otherwise, the on-edge conversations between the three characters are always clear and easy to understand. (Once again, though, Kino-Lorber has neglected to include any subtitles for those who need or want them.) Leith Stevens' tense and brassy score sounds great too, with no high end brashness or peaking.
The Hitch-Hiker may not have enough going on beneath the surface to make it one of the all-time noir greats, but it is a fast, lean thriller with one hell of a bad guy in William Talman's Emmet Meyers, a stone-cold psychopath who's cruel and heartless and out of control. The film also holds the distinction of being the first mainstream noir directed by a woman—the talented Ida Lupino—and this is reason enough for fans of the genre to search it out. Thankfully, though, it's more than just a historical curiosity; The Hitch-Hiker genuinely holds up well for a potboiler. It also looks great in high definition thanks to Kino-Lorber's new 1080p presentation. Though slim in the bonus features department—some sort of retrospective of Lupino's career would've been nice—this is an all-around solid release. Recommended.
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Reissue | Special Edition
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Warner Archive Collection
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Slipcover in Original Pressing
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4K Restoration
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