The Sign of the Ram 1948

Mallory St. Aubyn, Alexander Knox, drives Sherida Binyon, Phyllis Thaxter, to Bastions, his family estate on the western coast of England, where Sherida is to serve as secretary to Leah St. Aubyn, Susan Peters. Leah is a poet who uses a wheelchair after an accident when she rescued her step-children — Jane St. Aubyn [Allene Roberts], Logan St. Aubyn [Ross Ford], and Christine St. Aubyn [Peggy Ann Garner] — from drowning. The three children appear devoted to Leah, perhaps out of guilt, while Leah manipulates the family’s affections through her own condition and flirts with her doctor, Dr. Simon Crowdy, Ron Randell.

The household is also visited by the gossipy neighbor Clara Brastock, May Whitty, whose presence adds to the undercurrents of suspicion and control. Christine and Clara both raise Leah’s suspicions that Mallory and Sherida are attracted to each other, even though that is not true. Leah’s grip on the family weakens further when the doctor reveals that he intends to propose to Jane, placing additional pressure on the already fragile dynamics at Bastions.

Logan, a law student, resumes a romance with Catherine Woolton, Diana Douglas, a neighboring young woman. Leah then schemes to undermine that relationship by claiming Catherine, an adoptee, hails from a family afflicted by mental illness and cannot risk passing it on to any children the couple might have. When Catherine attempts suicide but is stopped by Logan, and Christine, her mind twisted by Leah, tries to poison Sherida, the house’s fragile balance shatters even further.

In the end, Leah is left alone in the home, consumed by her need to control the narrative around the family she’s intertwined with. In a final act of desperation and power, she makes her way to the cliff above the ocean and hurls herself into the sea, a stark, solitary culmination to a life spent manipulating those around her.