Part of Weekend Classics: Ida Lupino at 100.
Naive nightclub waitress Sally Kelton (Sally Forrest) falls hard for tough-talking, couldn’t-care-less pianist Steve Ryan (played by Leo Penn, Sean’s dad) who leaves town with Sally following him in vain. When director Elmer Clifton collapsed on set early in the film’s production, Lupino stepped in to finish the job.
“Lupino displays a documentary avidity for the details of work and play (as in a wildly ironic sequence involving a model railroad). She conveys Sally’s unworldly, impractical passion with tender, intimate closeups and an intense, effects-driven subjectivity—a hallucinatory sequence in a hospital is a masterpiece of low-budget expressionism. An incongruous yet majestic chase scene, highlighting a photogenic array of Los Angeles locations, projects the intimate melodrama onto the world stage.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker