Ida Lupino

This rather remarkable actress turned directer was in my opinion quite brave to try and take on such controversial topics as rape and being an unwed mother. In the movie The Bigamist, Lupino tackles the topic of Polygamy. In this movie we have a seemingly happy married traveling salesman whose wife due to being unable to have a child invests all her time into the family business. This man loves his wife but is so very lonely that he has an affair with an equally lonely woman he meets in another city. After discovering that she is pregnant he does the "honorable" thing and takes her as his wife despite already having a wife.
I felt that Lupino tried very hard to make a movie with a plot line that could have been considered a male basher if taken in a certain extreme direction so she seemed to take it to another extreme direction. She made the male character so sympathetic that in doing so she took away any culpability he would have had in the audiences eyes. I can understand that as a new director she may have felt pressure to make the male lead look not all bad but in doing so I feel she did a disservice to women.
I mean he wronged both these women leaving them with the shame of being cheated on and left alone and these two woman really seemed to care for him. The worst part is though that in the end you end up feeling more sorry for him than them! I just thought that if the story could have shown him in a harsh light the way an adulterer ought to be shown that this would have made the story a bit more even. Perhaps if he had gone to jail that might have been a better ending.

Vertigo

Vertigo unlike many of the the other Hitchcock Films features a much more developed, as well as more relatible female lead. In past movies the female lead always seemed to have an icy, cold, un-phased by anything exterier and this alufness seemed to appeal to the male lead but also to kept the audience from relating to her. Furthermore in films like North by Northwest or Rear window the female lead never seems to have a very developed storyline or any motivations that progress beyond what her male counterpart wants.
In Vertigo the character of Judy played by Kim Novack is very different than the typical Hitchcock female character and it is this difference that makes her more interesting and complex and therefore all the more fun to watch. She may have the same major motivation as the other women in these movies (to get her man) but it is the fact that her storyline contains plot twists and just a lot more content that allows the audience to feel a connection to her and there by relate to her on a more personal level. It is this connection that makes this movie special and a standout among the many great films of Hitchcock.
An interesting idea that came up during our class discussion was the comparison of Charlotte York from Sex and the City to Jim Stweart's Scottie in that they are in charge of what happens in there lives. I disagree I think Charlotte has more in common with Judy in that in this film for just as Charlotte outfits herself in the hopes of finding a man Judy allows herself to be outfitted in the hopes of keeping a man. Both women are ready and willing to use any means at their collective disposal to accomplish this goal. This is what I feel makes them more similar than Charlotte and Scottie.