TrueJoshNight
Truly Dreadful Film
Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Manthast
Absolutely amazing
clanciai
This is a miniature but a very efficient one. Ida Lupino is one of those actors I never found lacking but on the contrary raising every film she was in to a top level. She excelled in acting parts where she could make something great out of a small character, and this is a typical example. She gets a job as a caretaker at a large but desolate mansion of a great past but with a very dark secret developing into a looming mystery of constantly more threatening proportions, as Ida finds herself persecuted by the same kind of ghost that evidently scared away Jennifer, the previous lodger. No one knows what became of her, she just vanished without a trace, and that's the mystery, which immediately starts to haunt the vulnerable Ida, who gets more and more possessed by it. Two male characters also haunt the place and act as some kind of aids but seem both very suspicious, and she definitely cannot trust them and even less the more helpful they are. What's really happening is that everyone is keeping a secret from her, and as she can get no clue to the threat of this fact she naturally feels more and more exposed to unknown dangers, and she has a right to be. It all ends up to a shocking climax, making the structure of this film very similar to many Hitchcocks, especially "Suspicion" with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine 10 years earlier. The interest and quality of the film lies entirely with suggestions and innuendos, shadows speak more than words, the moods take over and dominate reality, and you get involved in Ida's increasing terror of the unknown. It's a marvellous small film and the greater and more interesting for its fascinating minimalism.
kapelusznik18
****SPOILERS**** The 1st of 4 films that Howard Duff & his wife Ida Lupino were together in has to do with this spooky mansion that seems to be haunted by its former resident Jennifer Brown who vanished without a trace about a year ago. It's the place's new caretaker Agnes Langley, Ida Lupino,who ends up being victimized by the ghostly Jennifer in what her reasons are for her strange disappearance as well as what she had to do with a number of people including her former boss lawyer Irving Samson's untimely deaths. It's the fact of Samson killing himself when he found out that his clients money, that he kept in a wall safe, was stolen from right under his nose. Agnes suspected Jennifer stole it by finding a bank book hidden in the place with over $70,000.00 in it that was-she feels-the result of Samson paying her off in him being blackmailed by her.It's grocery store owner and live in tenant at the Brown Estate Jim Hollis, Howard Duff, who gets very friendly with Agnes in trying to keep her from cracking up in fear that Jennifer is or was a serial murderess who's still stalking the place and targeting her as her next victim. The local delivery boy Orlin Slade, Robert Nichols, doesn't help either feeding Agnas all these weird stories about Jennifer whom he feel is still in the house hiding in a closet or the basement and coming out at night terrorizing it's inhabitants.****SPOILERS**** Shock down to your socks final with Hollis revealing the truth about Jennifer that kept Agnes from flipping out and going stark raving mad. It's after Agnes recovered from her unfounded fears about Jennifer who as it turned went mad and ended up dying in a sanitarium that we see what seems to be Jennifer reappearing in shadow making Hollis' story about her death seem a bit phony. That's unless she's the ghost that Agnes always suspected that she is.
MartinHafer
"Jennifer" has some interesting ideas and an interesting cast, but try as I did to like it, I just found the film to be very goofy. The film begins with Ida Lupino playing an odd lady. I say odd because she acted a bit disconnected with the world--and as the film progressed, she acted weirder and weirder. She takes the job as a caretaker of an old house with a past--something spooky happened to the previous lady who lived there. And, as the film progresses, she seems to be connecting with the spirit of that lady. During this time, she meets a man (her real-life husband, Howard Duff) and eventually begins to suspect him of some involvement in the previous occupant's disappearance.There are MANY problems with the scrip. First, it turns out that pretty much NOTHING that Lupino's character was channeling was true--making you think her character is more a flake or perhaps mentally ill herself. Second, repeatedly, this flaky lady seems to get stupid ideas into her head and run with them--again, making you question her sanity. Yet, in their final embrace, Duff assures her that everything is fine. No she isn't--and neither is the weird script. While it has some interesting elements, it just doesn't gel and left me quite cold. Did this film have anything to say? Not really.
bmacv
I first caught up with Jennifer years ago while out of town when it showed up on TV in the middle of the night; I fell asleep before it ended but it stuck with me until I had to track it down. Its appeal is that, though there's not a lot to it, it weaves an intriguing atmosphere, and because Ida Lupino and Howard Duff (real life man-and-wife at the time) display an alluring, low-key chemistry. Lupino plays a woman engaged to house-sit a vast California estate whose previous caretaker -- Jennifer -- up and disappeared. (Shades of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, although in this instance it's not Lupino who goes, or went, mad). Duff is the guy in town who manages the estate's finances and takes a shine to Lupino, who decides to play hard to get. She becomes more and more involved, not to say obsessed, with what happened to her predecessor in the old dark house full of descending stairways and locked cellars. The atmospherics and the romantic byplay are by far the best part of the movie, as viewers are likely to find the resolution a bit of a letdown -- there's just not that much to it (except a little frisson at the tail end that anticipates Brian De Palma's filmic codas). But it's well done, and, again, it sticks with you. Extra added attraction: this is the film that introduced the song "Angel Eyes," which would become part of the standard repertoire of Ol' Blue Eyes.
