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An empty chair sits between the cropped edges of two dining tables viewed from above.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

Drama

The Bigamist

BleakGentle Great first watch · Easy Drama

An adoption investigation exposes a travelling salesman’s two marriages and the loneliness, compromise, and deception that produced them.

Edited by Monocurator

Year
1953
Director
Ida Lupino
Country
United States
Length
85 min
Language
English

The Bigamist ending: what happens to Harry and his two wives?

The investigation and the courtroom leave different questions open. Read this after watching to place the final scene.

The investigation and courtroom ending · Spoilers

Does Harry choose a wife at the end?

The film ends before Harry’s sentence or either woman’s future decision is shown. The judge adjourns until the following week, and Harry is led away while Eve and Phyllis watch. The judge doubts that either woman will wait for him; that is his assessment, not a decision spoken by the women. The story gives us no reconciliation and no scene of Harry settling with one wife.

Does the investigator report Harry?

AFI’s synopsis separates Mr. Jordan’s decision from Harry’s. Jordan hears his confession and leaves without calling the police. Harry then writes to Phyllis, says goodbye to Eve, and gives himself up. The courtroom follows his surrender; it does not establish that Jordan secretly reported him.

His double life has been exposed. What the women will make of the truth belongs to a future the film leaves outside the frame.

What to expect

Lupino refuses a single convenient villain. Her direction moves among three adults whose needs do not fit the moral and domestic arrangements available to them, finding judgement without flattening complexity.

How to ease in

The confession is the main path through the film. Pay attention to how work travel and separate cities allow Harry to postpone a decision until delay itself becomes the decision.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes bigamy, infidelity, pregnancy, emotional abandonment, adoption anxiety, and period gender expectations.
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Harry explains himself clearly, but explanation is not repair. I am most interested in the women’s different kinds of isolation and the limits of sympathy once another person has been denied the truth.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Credits
Screenplay
Collier Young
Production
Collier Young · Filmakers Productions, Inc.
Cinematography
George Diskant

Version map

BFI 85-minute presentation85 min85 minutes is attached only to the named BFI 85-minute presentation. No unsupported cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred.Source: British Film Institute — The BigamistRuntime reference · Checked 2026-08-21

Sources for the facts

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