Why Outrage remains a vital film for survivors of… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why Out­rage remains a vital film for sur­vivors of sex­u­al violence

27 Sep 2020

Words by Lizzy Dening

Portrait of a woman with curly dark hair looking towards the camera through a window.
Portrait of a woman with curly dark hair looking towards the camera through a window.
Ida Lupino’s 1950 dra­ma about a young woman who is raped on her way home from work feels as urgent as ever.

Ida Lupino was a cin­e­ma pio­neer, espe­cial­ly when it came to telling women’s sto­ries. After start­ing out as an actor, she became the first woman to direct a film noir (1953’s The Hitch-Hik­er) and the only woman to direct an episode of The Twi­light Zone. She described her­self as a bull­doz­er” when it came to find­ing finances for her projects, but a moth­er” on set, nur­tur­ing her actors to ensure nat­ur­al performances.

In the eight films she direct­ed, after form­ing inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny The Film­mak­ers with her hus­band of the time, Col­lier Young, she was unafraid to tack­le con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects. Not Want­ed, made in 1949, explores an unplanned preg­nan­cy, while she also tack­led infer­til­i­ty and bigamy in The Bigamist. But her crown­ing achieve­ment is the B‑movie Out­rage. Made 70 years ago, it focus­es on the rape of a young mid­dle-class woman named Ann Wal­ton (Mala Pow­ers). Hav­ing been attacked by a stranger on her way home from work, a dev­as­tat­ed Ann is unable to con­tin­ue with nor­mal life, alien­at­ing her­self from her fam­i­ly and ulti­mate­ly run­ning away.

I’m vice chair of Peter­bor­ough Rape Cri­sis Care Group, and a pro­fes­sion­al obses­sion of mine is the use of lan­guage around rape. One of the main rea­sons I set up Sur­vivor Sto­ries – a plat­form fea­tur­ing long-form inter­views with sur­vivors of sex­u­al vio­lence – was to cor­rect some of the prob­lems that tra­di­tion­al media still has when talk­ing about rape. Out­rage has been a use­ful tool to help me empha­sise some of these prob­lems – and no doubt it has helped gen­er­a­tions of sur­vivors to start to express themselves.

A cen­tral theme in Out­rage is this strug­gle to com­mu­ni­cate. Nei­ther Ann, her fam­i­ly, nor the pro­fes­sion­als tasked with help­ing her are able to say the word rape’ (‘vicious assault’ is as far as any­one gets). This ten­sion around lan­guage con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem 70 years on, includ­ing for rape char­i­ties them­selves – cen­tres are often put under pres­sure to omit the word rape’ from their organisation’s name, for exam­ple on col­lec­tion buck­ets. The impli­ca­tion of this is that rape is too hor­rif­ic and dis­turb­ing a crime to speak about. And, whether sub­con­scious­ly or not, that has a knock-on effect on many sur­vivors, leav­ing them feel­ing a sense of shame, or of being some­how dam­aged. This is cer­tain­ly how Ann feels about herself.

For all it goes unnamed, the char­ac­ters all under­stand rape. Ann realis­es she’s in dan­ger well before any­thing actu­al­ly hap­pens, in a tru­ly effec­tive, omi­nous scene. The sud­den cur­tail­ing of the sound track – the tran­si­tion from her care­free whistling, to his shrill wolf whis­tles. The sound of their twinned foot­steps, which make Ann and her attack­er sound like the only two peo­ple left in the world. It’s a bril­liant device for high­light­ing the lone­li­ness that rape can leave in its wake.

After that, the attack­er isn’t giv­en a sec­ond thought. He’s not even named. We’re not invit­ed to care about his psy­chol­o­gy; Lupino’s focus is sole­ly on Ann and her recovery.

Ann is vis­it­ed almost imme­di­ate­ly by the police, who ques­tion her with­out acknowl­edg­ing her obvi­ous dis­tress. Dur­ing her inter­ro­ga­tion her face is framed by the bed­posts so that her mouth is cov­ered. No one is real­ly lis­ten­ing. A police­man com­plains: We pick up cas­es every day, slap them in jail…after that I don’t know what hap­pens.” With rape con­vic­tion rates cur­rent­ly at an all-time low, this again feels gloomi­ly famil­iar to a mod­ern audience.

Cinema is, and always has been, a powerful tool in making people feel less alone.

Ann is under a huge amount of pres­sure. Her fam­i­ly want her to move on, her fiancé wants to get mar­ried, and the police demand her help with catch­ing her attack­er. Try to remem­ber, we don’t want this man on the streets tonight,” says the police offi­cer, inad­ver­tent­ly mak­ing her respon­si­ble for the fates of oth­er women. It’s no won­der she runs away.

The film’s ulti­mate mes­sage is that to help sur­vivors we need to be more like the doc’, Bruce Fer­gu­son, a kind­ly rev­erend who finds Ann by the road­side with a sprained ankle, and takes her in. While the fem­i­nist in me ran­kles a bit at the idea that a man comes along to save her, to give him his dues, he is the only char­ac­ter who actu­al­ly lis­tens to Ann. He repeat­ed­ly asks her if he can help her, and waits for her to tell him how. He shares his own expe­ri­ences when she’s qui­et, help­ing her relate to him, and giv­ing her space to share her own, when she’s ready. He nev­er gives up; he makes sug­ges­tions – a walk in the coun­try­side – and leaves her time to make a deci­sion. It’s baby steps, but that’s what’s often need­ed after trau­ma: gen­tle oppor­tu­ni­ties to make small choices.

As you might imag­ine for a low-bud­get B‑movie on such a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject, Out­rage wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the male-cen­tric The Hitch-Hik­er – it still isn’t avail­able on DVD or any UK stream­ing plat­form (although it is on YouTube). Watch­ing Out­rage today is a dou­ble-edged sword: on the one hand, it proves how for­ward-think­ing Lupino real­ly was; on the oth­er, it demon­strates how lit­tle progress has been made for sur­vivors of sex­u­al violence. 

In 1950 it was extreme­ly rare to show any type of rape on screen, but the key for writ­ers and direc­tors now is to cast a wider net for expe­ri­ences of sex­u­al vio­lence to por­tray. We are just start­ing to see a breadth of sto­ries told, across dif­fer­ent races, ages, sex­u­al­i­ties and expe­ri­ences, and it mat­ters – there’s a mea­sur­able rela­tion­ship between por­tray­als of spe­cif­ic groups, and calls to helplines. Cin­e­ma is, and always has been, a pow­er­ful tool in mak­ing peo­ple feel less alone. And Ida Lupino was a trail­blaz­er for survivors.

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