I miss Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strip.  More likely, I am feeling nostalgia for the days of the alternative newspapers in which it would appear.  The two characters I found most interesting were the identical, fez-topped Akbar and Jeff, and my most favorite of their appearances is when one secretly reads the diary of the other.  The entry for each day proves to be the same mundane stuff, until the final panel reveals they are accidentally reading their own diary.

This came to mind while watching 1953 noir Jennifer.  The titular character has disappeared and Ida Lupino becomes obsessed with her while working as caretaker of the woman’s mansion.  A diary maintained by that mysteriously absent figure is far from exciting.  Days upon days of entries like “iron clothes”, “paint closets” and “oiled the sewing machine”.  You wonder why anybody bothered recording any of this.  But then there are days with a passage such as “felt like someone was watching me.”

This is a feeling Lupino experiences almost immediately.  Of course, it is easy to let your imagination get the best of you when the only other occupant of this sprawling mansion in the deep southwest is a terse groundskeeper (Russ Conway), whom I believe she sees only twice.  It doesn’t help her that mysterious little things keep happening, such as the open diary being on a different page after the returns to the room.

There are guys of varying levels of creepiness orbiting her  In addition to the aforementioned Conway, there is Robert Nichols, who brings deliveries from the grocery where he works.  He is obsessed with the reclusive, and now missing, Jennifer and finds a variety of excuses to drop by the mansion and propose some theories.  He is immediately suspect, as he has a penchant for creative embellishment of the truth.  The store which employs him is owned by Howard Duff, who has romantic designs on Lupino, telling Nichols to stay away from her.

Everything here feels more like atmospheric horror than noir.  Lupino’s first scene is even at a gas station where the shopworn horror trope of a harbinger warns her of going up to that mansion, that strange things have always happened there.  As her car pulls away, he yells after her that he’ll see her in a couple of days. I believe he meant she will inevitably only last that long in the new job, but who knows.

It is obvious something odd has transpired in the house, as Jennifer’s clothes are all still in her closet.  There’s also a sweater she was in the process of knitting, but now left unfinished.  Duff, rather unnervingly, tells Lupino there’s nothing mysterious about any of this and that people just disappear all the time.  I wonder if it was thinking like that which is why is took so long for law enforcement to realize there was such a phenomenon as serial killers. I can imagine a police station with a desk sergeant answering the phone and yelling, “Why do you keep calling to report another woman disappeared? I’m sick of you accusing that nice Bates boy of anything. Why, just the other day, I stopped by the motel he manages and he was extremely grateful when I helped him add a few more bags of quicklime to the pit he has out back.”

Frankly, Duff is creepy in this, even when I believe that wasn’t the intention.  He basically stalks her, following her into a music store and occupying the soundproof listening booth next to hers.  There is some odd business with him miming a variety of actions to her, and I have no idea what these were supposed to be.  The last one looks like nothing other than, “Want to go smoke a bong?”, however unlikely that might be.  And, when she expresses to him a fear Jennifer’s body might be hidden away in the basement, he demands they go down there together at that exact moment to see if that’s true.  I know I would have been telling him to have fun with that, then turn heel and walk away quickly.  There is no way I would go down to the basement with that guy.  That the film presents her rejection of this stalker as being a flaw in her psyche is risible.

At least the film looks good, especially for being the output of the very minor league Allied Artists studio.  Legendary cinematography James Wong Howe uses the mansion, with its high-ceilinged rooms, to great effect.  The production looks more expensive than had to be possible.

Jennifer is especially stunning in its opening title sequence, where the long, thin shadow of a woman slowly approaches mansion.  As the inky blackness of the shadow goes up the stairs, it is like a trail of blood somehow flowing up the steps or a snake sneaking up to the door.  It is an image equally startling, beautiful and eerie.  Alas, the final few seconds will be the same thing again, except its use here is inexplicable and seemingly discounts nearly everything we have seen.  How odd a film’s undoing would be a decision to use its most effective visual more than once.

Dir: Joel Newton

Starring Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Robert Nichols

Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXIV