Mistério de uma Mulher

If you liked seeing Ida Lupino in all her films, this is a must see film with an outstanding director, producer and great acting. Ida Lupino, (Ellen Creed) plays the role of a companion for a rich retired actress who also has a maid named Lucy performed by Evelyn Keyes. The story becomes very complicated when Ellen Creed invites her two sisters to visit with her. However, these two gals are simply loony tunes in their heads and will drive you completely crazy with their great supporting roles. Louis Hayward, (Albert Feather) is a family acquaintance to Ellen Creed and he decides to stay at their home and get away from his banking problems. Elsa Lanchester,(Emily Creed), "Bride of Frankenstein", also gives a great supporting role. This is a great mystery film with a great plot that will keep you guessing just how this film will end. I was also surprised to learn that Ida Lupino and Louis Hayward were husband and wife in real life while this film was being produced.

Some people get the strangest notions. Take Ida Lupino in Ladies In Retirement. She's served faithfully and well as a companion/secretary to rich Isobel Elsom for many years and when her sisters Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett come for a visit Elsom allows them to stay. But when they start taking over the place Elsom says they have to go. Instead it's Elsom who goes rather permanently and the story goes out that the woman has gone away.

Also now squatting at the residence is the nephew of all three of the sisters, son of a fourth sister who was apparently the only one who married. He's played by Louis Hayward and this isolated place on the English moors is ideal for a man who is on the run from the authorities after stealing 100 pounds from the bank he was employed at. He's guilty of embezzlement, but aunt Ida is guilty of maybe something far worse.

Once again Hayward shows his versatility after playing the swashbuckling hero son of the Count Of Monte Cristo now reverts to playing a blackmailing villain. He never had the major studio ties that his two main competitors Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power had, but he also was allowed to vary his roles as he wasn't as big a star as these other two. Hayward was just a fine and versatile actor.

Lupino though is the real star here. A very steely woman with iron self control she sees her world start to crumble around her as people become suspicious. Most suspicious of all is Hayward who even though he's on the run isn't above attempting some blackmail. Impervious to it all are clueless spinsters Lanchester and Barrett.

Those moors which provided so much story inspiration to Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Conan Doyle serve once again as a grand back drop to Ladies In Retirement. The final fadeout of Lupino on those moors is unforgettable.

Ladies In Retirement got Oscar nominations for Art Direction and Music Scoring. Sad that neither Ida Lupino or Louis Hayward were similarly recognized. Though they got each other as prizes as Hayward married the woman who played his maiden aunt in the film.

Definitely a film for Ida Lupino fans and Louis Hayward is an actor waiting to be rediscovered.

Ida Lupino as Ellen Creed cryptically says to her nephew (Louis Hayward). Lupino is in top form here as a housekeeper who must care for her two sisters who are being evicted or sent to an asylum. It is the late 1800's and the weather on the heath is unforgiving and reminiscent of a Bronte novel.

Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett portray the two sisters whom Lupino must care for. She lives at Leonora Fiske's (well-portrayed by Isobel Elsom) mansion and at first the sisters are allowed to stay. But Ms. Fiske is an eccentric matron and tires of their company. She informs Ellen Creed (Lupino) they must leave. ..."Have you no compassion, no feeling for the poor?"... Lupino intones this even as she sees the mistress of the house will be throwing her out on the street. Lupino feels obligation to the two wayward sisters, who have some mental issues and would have been (at that time probably) committed to Bedlam state asylum. So she decides what she must do.

Later, Louis Hayward pops up and is the nephew. He becomes suspicious when Ms. Fiske never shows up; He is intrigued that his aunt suddenly owns the house. There is much suspense here and the cinematography is haunting and shadowed; we are not certain at the capabilities of Ellen Creed (Lupino) or what she may do next. I also highly recommend "Road House" with Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. Excellent and could never be remade today. 10/10.

This is a weird one, atmospheric, moody, and brooding. It has a script by Reginald Denham based on his play, and although director Charles Vidor makes sure it does not come across as stagey, but makes the confined atmosphere work for him, the action has a kind of mental proscenium arch around it. This was Edith Barrett's first film, and she is superb. Elsa Lanchester does well in another one of her roles as an insane eccentric. What is particularly fascinating is to see the young Evelyn Keyes aged 25 but looking a virginal 18, and the sweetest little thing you ever saw. It is hard to imagine she had already made 15 films, as she looks straight out of the milk parlour. When I knew her in her mid-fifties she was so ultra-sophisticated that the idea of her ever having been innocent seems inconceivable. But she certainly is in this film! I guess that's called acting! She later married the director of this film, before moving on to Artie Shaw and John Huston (and anyone who could survive Huston as a husband was no little girl!). Ida Lupino plays the lead role, but it is a thankless task, because it is her job to look intense all the time, with very little scope for anything else. What a waste of her talents! She kisses the heads of her mad sisters very lovingly, and that's about all the emotion she is allowed to show. This is a claustrophobic story of how crazy people do crazy things. There might be a murder committed, but I'm not telling. It is set in a kind of mythical Essex marshes, and the sun never shines once through the mist. They must have used up all the dry ice in London for this film.

Glorious Gothic camp. A seemingly unlikely, yet perfectly cast, Ida Lupino is the stiff-backed housekeeper and companion to fussy actress Isobel Elsom. When she discovers that her two daft sisters, (an excellent Edith Barrett and a superb Elsa Lanchester), are to be evicted from their lodgings she decides to move them in but first she must do something about her employer. Things get complicated when Lupino's scurrilous 'nephew' turns up and is quick to put two and two together.

The setting is one those quaint old cottages on the English marshes that are perpetually shrouded in fog and which one someone in Hollywood could dream up and the source material was a play by Reginald Denham and Edward Percy. By rights it should be terrible but it's actually hugely enjoyable and Lupino's terrific, (she makes for a very sympathetic murderess). It's the kind of film that would sit very nicely next to "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" and "Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice".