The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“This is one of Lupino’s finest, fiercest, and most nuanced performances (presaging, in certain ways, Gena Rowlands’s work with Cassavetes) … Out of all the classical studio directors, Walsh had the best nose for milieu, and the film is pungent with late-night nightclub atmosphere: musicians’ sweat, cigarette smoke, bad perfume, spilled beer … Seamy, steamy, brittle stuff.”

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Cine-File

Before she directed her own films noir, Ida Lupino’s most creatively fulfilling partnership was with director Raoul Walsh on four films. Their work together culminated in her first-billed role as singer Petey Brown, a New Yorker who knows the late-night solace and high-pressure drive of the music scene, but hasn’t yet tasted success. When she pays her family a long-distance visit over the winter holidays she finds trouble and seamlessly adapts to it, navigating the powerlust of a nightclub owner and crime boss to protect those who would otherwise be his prey: her two sisters, her brother, and even the neighbour across the hall. Walsh doesn’t bother with innuendo or moral quandaries—he’s forcefully direct—and Lupino’s sensibility is fit to match. Scorsese’s New York, New York owes a lot to this film; he supported this new restoration, which includes, for the first time since its original release, six minutes previously cut for music copyright reasons.

“There are plenty of fictional artists in movies, but few whose very presence is as haunting and inspiring as the jazz pianist played by Bruce Bennett in The Man I Love … Walsh [is] a master of sarcastic and tight-lipped stoicism.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Walsh’s direction, wonderfully flexible in negotiating the pinball effect as characters and problems interact, gives the whole thing the kaleidoscopic flavour of a prototype Alan Rudolph movie.”

Tom Milne, Time Out