They Called It Retirement

It's funny how a story of murder and madness can be so cosy. 1941's Ladies in Retirement stars Ida Lupino as a wealthy woman's servant who tries to get her mentally unstable sisters moved into the country house. The movie has beautiful atmosphere around its existential rumination on class resentment.

Ida Lupino was 23 years old at the time but she's playing a character who was supposed to be 60 on the Broadway show on which the film is based. The filmmakers tried to do everything they could to make her look older but Ida Lupino still looks young even for 23.

So it's a little odd when 31 year old Louis Hayward, playing a character called Albert, shows up claiming to be her nephew. It's odd but not impossible, of course, if Lupino's character, Ellen, had an older brother or sister who had a child before Ellen was born. So I mostly just looked at it like that, except the nephew angle is an odd choice for Albert to choose when he cons Miss Fiske (Isobel Elsom), Ellen's employer.

One of the things I love about this movie is that it pits a remorseless conman against a desperate murderess. There are no heroes here. At the same time, like any good noir protagonist, Ellen's motives complicate the issue. Ellen's two mad sisters, played by Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett (I was so happy to see a movie in which Elsa Lanchester and Ida Lupino are sisters), have been abused in a London asylum. They've got nowhere else to go. We also learn the three came from a previously wealthy family and much of their former furniture and knickknacks are in Miss Fiske's home because she'd bought them from Ellen. So the film puts a lot of tension on the artificial construct of transactions on which society is based. Does Ellen really have a right to turn out Ellen and her sisters, however badly the sisters behave? So the motive to murder is abundantly clear. It's a pity for Ellen that Albert starts nosing around.

Ladies in Retirement is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1739

The question pasta washed a saucy state.
O fortune's stalls please house a worthy horse.
The climbing score reduced the going rate.
A shiny ship resumed the glitter course.
A watching worm has wondered why we stopped.
A scrap of song enlivens seconds lost.
Above the crimson trees a signal dropped.
With wooded bars the forest reckons cost.
A moment's lust demands a cloudless sky.
Obtrusive eyes have ruined heaven's lure.
The frightened people can't resist to pry.
Intrusive brutes demand a single cure.
The final break removed the foot from leg.
The changing month infused the pickled egg.