Displaying items by tag: Ida Lupino

JENNIFER

US, 1953, 73 minutes, Black-and-white.

Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Robert Nichols.

Directed by Joel Newton.

Jennifer was a film noir of the 1950s, focusing on female paranoia. It had mixed responses, some considering it excellent of its kind, others noting that the plot was rather slight.

It is a star vehicle for Ida Lupino, playing with her husband of 30 years to come, Howard Duff. Ida Lupino had been a star of the 1940s and moved into direction in the 1950s with films like The Hitchhiker and The Bigamist (both with more impact than Jennifer).

Ida Lupino plays a woman, Agnes, needing a job, anxious, looking after mansion where the previous owner has disappeared, Jennifer. She has to pack Jennifer’s things, finds a diary with notes, becomes obsessed with these notes and what has happened to Jennifer, people in the area suggesting she was a blackmailer, suicide.

Howard Duff plays a local owner of a business, is attracted to Agnes, trying to break her out of her anxiety, taking her dancing which mellows her. However, a local helper to Howard Duff keeps referring to the disappearance, suspicions about his boss, continuing to influence Agnes and her thinking she has found Jennifer’s body in the pool in the furnace room.

Eventually, Howard Duff is able to reassure her, she has seen her own reflection, that Jennifer was insane and had been removed to a sanatorium where she has died.

A curiosity item in the tradition of American film noir, and significant in the talented career of Ida Lupino as actress and as a director.