The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, June 8-14
Not Wanted (1949)
Directed by Elmer Clifton
Despite Clifton’s credit, the film clearly bears the mark of its writer-producer Ida Lupino, who took over when failing health forced the director of record to step aside. Though overshadowed then and now by her work as an actor, the handful of features Lupino directed confirm her as one of the most gifted filmmakers of her generation. Not Wanted, her de facto debut, is a social-problem melodrama of uncommon tenderness and honesty, starring Sally Forrest as a woman who becomes, in the uncomfortably pointed expression, an “unwed mother.” While the plot follows the form of a moralistic exploitation picture, Lupino’s compassion pierces the stifling veil of postwar complacency, admitting a ray of light to a long, dark tunnel. Eli Goldfarb (June 8, 11, 12:30pm; June 16, 5:55pm at Film Forum’s “Genre Is a Woman”)