When Patrick McGilligan interviewed Ida Lupino in 1974, he was already exhibiting a now well-established critical preference: he was far more interested in her directing work. It makes sense, in a way. Director Dorothy Arzner retired in 1943. By the time Lupino directed her first film, in 1949, women feature-film directors in Hollywood consisted of—well, her. She was unique. She was a pioneer.

But, as we hope to illustrate with this twelve-film series on the Criterion Channel, it would be a serious mistake to neglect Ida Lupino’s acting in favor of the eight features she made as a director. (Nor should her considerable work in television be counted out, but that’s another topic.) Lupino was one of the best, most vivid and original actresses in Hollywood, making permanent classics with directors such as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, Michael Curtiz, and Vincent Sherman. She played “spirited, tough, offbeat” characters, as McGilligan put it. And by her own account, Lupino’s taste in roles shaped what she chose to do as a director. “I liked the strong characters,” she told McGilligan, “something that has some intestinal fortitude, some guts to it. Just a straight role drives me up the wall. Playing a nice woman who just sits there, that’s my greatest limitation.”

Like many actresses then and now, she had to work her way past the “nice” roles. Ida Lupino arrived in Hollywood in 1933. Just fifteen years old, she was the product of a famed English theatrical dynasty. She had made about a half-dozen British films, and she had enormous drive even by Hollywood standards. Signed by Paramount, Lupino soon found herself working as a fluffy blond ingenue, often in musicals or comedies.

Anything Goes

High Sierra

Moontide

Dennis Hopper’s bleakly nihilistic drama struggled to find an audience after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980, but time has revealed it to be one of the most hardcore films about disaffected youth ever made.

From Kaneto Shindo to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the masters of the genre over the past half-century have tapped into a deep well of cultural anxiety, exploring everything from the sins of their nation’s feudal past to the dangers of new technologies.

The director of such classic political docudramas as On the Bowery and Come Back, Africa defied the conventions of nonfiction filmmaking with his innovative approach to collaboration and performance.

This once-maligned horror film is an unsparing exploration of sexual violence, remarkably centered on a complex, fully realized female protagonist, played courageously by Barbara Hershey.