The Sign of the Ram (1948)

Breathtakingly beautiful film—of course not without its drawbacks related to its readiness in linking evil with physical disability—but Susan Peters is a powerhouse, and the climactic ending of her Leah St. Aubyn is rendered palpably moving by Peters’ own passing some five odd years later.

Leah reminds me of the way I feel about Ellen in Leave Her To Heaven. While not aiming for a total, exculpatory empathy for these characters by any means, the motives of both women can be understood through their dysfunctional, possessive need to regain a sense of autonomy diminished by their own trauma.

In an era devoid of modern diagnoses and talk therapy, it can be minutely satisfying to see a thriller in the form of a woman on celluloid, who cannot as much as open her own bank account, wreak psychological havoc on the family unit. Susan Peters’ Leah almost has more of a right to this pernicious manipulation than Ellen—she has resigned herself to a permanent housebound state of existence through saving the lives of two stepchildren from drowning, at the loss of her mobility. Leah is nearly reliant on her husband, given the context of the era, and the arrival of an attractive secretary at Bastion’s does much to upset the fragile equilibrium.

While Leave Her To Heaven’s Ellen does much the opposite for her prospective brother-in-law, Leah alludes to wishing the sea had taken all of her after saving the stepchildren, not just her physical ability; she is more than aware of what she has given up for them, and they are as well. She is cursed with a paradoxical resentment and attachment; she believes she has given them life just as much as their birth mother did.

As a result, Leah views the stepchildren as an extension of herself, forcing them to wallow in her own misery by keeping them like Yorkies on retractable leashes, constantly pulling them in and giving them rope.

Peters herself recognized Leah for what she was. “Leah is a completely domineering woman,” she said of the character, “but I know what makes her that way. It is a fear of being alone.”

The shots of Leah and Sherida in conversation with beams of light passing over their faces from the lighthouse beacon, illuminating them, are as engaging as they are beautiful. There is a well-constructed sincerity to the stormy Gothic ambience which I really feel like thanking cinematographer Burnett Guffey for.