Outrage (DVD)

Directed by pioneering actress/filmmaker Ida Lupino (The Hitch-Hiker, The Bigamist), the controversial classic Outrage was one of the first Hollywood films of its era to deal with the subject of rape. Mala Powers (Cyrano de Bergerac, City That Never Sleeps) stars as Ann Walton, a young bookkeeper freshly engaged to her boyfriend, Jim Owens (Robert Clarke, The Man from Planet X). But her promising life unravels completely when, on her way home from work one evening, she is raped. The trauma of the attack shatters her sense of identity and forces her to flee from home in shame. Praised by Martin Scorsese as “a subdued behavioral study that captures the banality of evil in an ordinary small town,” Outrage is a unique and vital film noir that addresses the widespread and unquestioned violence that women face with remarkable sensitivity. In 2020, Lupino’s landmark achievement was deemed a “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” work of art and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.