WSteG-iMac Ida Lupino, born into a British show business dynasty, was as convincing as any foreign player at passing for American in movies. What's more, she got to direct seven features, unheard of for a woman in the late 1940s and '50s. The Bigamist was the last of consequence; probably the best is The Hitch-hiker of 1953.The major problem with the movie under review is its title. If we didn't know this fact about Edmond O'Brien until it transpired in the plot, we would have had a lot more to bite on. So the extended play between O'Brien and Lupino (as actress) loses tension because we already know how it will play out. What's more, most of the story is told in flashback, which means that there is other information we carry right through the movie that we would have found more nourishing to gain later. It cries out to be told chronologically, with the arrival of Edmund Gwenn postponed until much later. And indeed the opening sequence in Gwenn's office is directed over-emphatically by Lupino, pointing us towards concerns about O'Brien's character.A small issue but one that diminishes the film concerns the coy remarks, occurring in two separate scenes, about Miracle on 34th Street and Gwenn's role in it. Indeed, that O'Brien and Lupino meet on a studio tour bus interrupts the sequence with name-dropping to no useful purpose.But I want to end positively. The acting is first rate - Joan Fontaine is especially good in what could easily have become a thankless role - and the willingness to tackle difficult material (including out-of-wedlock pregnancy) is wholly admirable.

bkoganbing Though hampered by the fact that this an independent film without big studio distribution, The Bigamist was a decent enough film and did well by two of its three stars Joan Fontaine and Ida Lupino. Lupino also doubled as director. As for Edmond O'Brien I can scarcely believe the character he's playing. O'Brien plays a successful businessman who marries the boss's daughter and winds up running the business as the father gradually leaves control to him. They're seeming happy enough until O'Brien visits Los Angeles on a trip and meets Ida Lupino. Seems as though she sparks something that Fontaine never has in O'Brien.He winds up married to both with a child with each, the one with Fontaine adopted. The circumstances were at bit much and O'Brien just seems to drift never taking charge or making a choice. The film is almost an argument for polygamy.Usually bigamy as a film subject is treated as comedic. In the same decade of the Fifties both Clifton Webb in The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and Alec Guinness were done with humor, good satirical humor. The Bigamist doesn't have any laughs.All this is told in flashback within a flashback, a trial with Kenneth Tobey defending O'Brien and within that O'Brien explaining himself to Edmund Gwenn who plays a child welfare case worker who was investigating O'Brien and Fontaine and discovered this whole business.In fact Gwenn is as incredulous as I was at how an apparently decent man like O'Brien could have so screwed up his life. That was my feeling after seeing The Bigamist.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Certainly melodramatic in spots, but overall a great, absorbing drama from actress-turned- director Ida Lupino (who takes on both duties in this picture). In some ways, the story seems like a clever re-working of Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter.' Only this time the adulterer is male (and nicely played by Edmond O'Brien) and the indiscretions are not made public but kept private. As the plot unfolds, we watch the ramifications of his actions play out. We quickly learn that he has married two women in two different towns, with each one unaware that the other wife exists. They gradually come to the realization that their husband is a bigamist, and evolve from naive to more knowledgeable-- perhaps emerging stronger because of it. Lupino and costar Joan Fontaine give impressive performances as the wives, and it is not easy to decide which one deserves to keep O'Brien before the final fade out. It's that kind of triangle. Enlivening the proceedings are some of the era's best character actors: Jane Darwell as a cleaning lady; and Edmund Gwenn as a social worker who catches on to O'Brien's duplicitous ways.

Boba_Fett1138 Considering its resources and it's rather small budget, this is a pretty good movie, from director/actress Ida Lupino. It was made without the backing of any big studios but yet it starred some capable and big name actors in it, no doubt thanks to Lupino's connections in Hollywood. Ida Lupino was quite a big name actress at the time, thanks to roles she played in "High Sierra", "They Drive by Night" and "The Sea Wolf", among others. But due to her age good acting roles were becoming more hard and hard to get by. She then decided to do a not so common thing for a female at the time; she decided to direct and also write movies on her own. Not that she ever became much successful with it though but that seems hardly her fault. There were simply no big studios or producers at the time who dared to back a female director up at time, despite of her good reputation as an established actress. Therefor she got mostly stuck to directing low budget films that never got big releases. This is a real shame, since she definitely had some directing qualities and knew how to bring a good story to the screen.Perhaps with this movie Lupino also tried to make a social statement and address the issue of bigamy, which supposedly was happening on quite a large scale at the time but was of course not much talked about. So seems to me that this movie was handling a quite delicate matter, though the movie doesn't ever try to make a big issue out of it, or try to be preachy about it. You don't really know whether you should hate or care for this man and the situation that he got into, as the Edmund Gwenn character also says in the movie. You don't like him at first or what he is doing but yet you can also grow some understanding for him and hope things will work out for the good of him in the long run.It's pretty obvious that this movie was low budget, especially when you compare it to the other stuff that got done in 1953. It has a simplistic and cheap look over it but the movie sort of overcomes this all, thanks to its good story and the overall handling of it, by the director and actor.This movie has quite some big names in it, next to Ida Lupino herself of course. Edmond O'Brien plays the real main and not so grateful role of the movie. He does handle his character and manages to be unlikeable in the beginning but likely toward the end. Joan Fontaine also stars, as does her mother Lillian Fontaine, in a much smaller role. Definitely a good movie, also especially when consider its limited resources and the fact that a female directed it, in a time when this wasn't really socially accepted in Hollywood.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/