I Cipressi is a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, high above Laurel Canyon Drive, whose apparent promise of refuge becomes entangled with histories of abandonment, illness, and danger. Cass Chaplin and Eddy G bring the pregnant Norma Jeane Baker to consider renting it as a home for her pregnancy and the first months of Baby’s life. The villa’s scale and theatrical beauty attract the men, but its exposed position, financial demands, oppressive mirrors, and unsettling disturbances make it a troubled answer to Norma Jeane’s need for safety.

Setting and Intended Use

I Cipressi is the sixth or seventh villa the three have visited in what Cass calls their epic search. He imagines the house as an elevation above both Los Angeles and history, a setting fit for the future represented by a newborn. He casts Baby’s birth in almost messianic terms: each new child renews the world, and this child might matter to civilization. His vision gives the property a significance beyond its rooms; the villa is to be the home for a hoped-for beginning.

The location does not feel equally suited to Norma Jeane. It stands high enough for the wind to be conspicuous, and she worries about the force of the Santa Ana winds and whether the exposed house would be suitable for a pregnant woman or an infant. Cass and Eddy G, both accustomed to grand homes, are drawn to its exotic, unusual character. Norma Jeane, meanwhile, notices the practical gap between their confidence and her circumstances. The rent and the servants a house of this size would require are not trivial, and she wonders where the money would come from. Her film contract offers no additional payment for the success of Niagara; as a contract actress, she cannot demand more. Pregnancy may keep her from working for a year or longer, perhaps ending her career. Cass and Eddy G reassure her that the rent is reasonable and that they can manage by combining their resources, but the financial risk remains part of the house’s appeal and threat.

Grandeur, Decay, and a Former Owner

The villa’s name comes from the many cypress trees planted around its perimeter instead of the more usual palms. The wind has left most of them chopped and misshapen, their once-elegant forms resembling tormented figures. Inside, the contrast between luxury and damage continues: Norma Jeane finds black ants moving through a crack in a wall decorated with Mexican mosaics. The building advertises wealth, yet its cracks and battered trees make that splendor look vulnerable to forces it cannot control.

The main hall resembles a museum, with marble floors, crystal chandeliers, brass candelabra, silk wallpaper, mirrors, and a vast curving staircase. In the enormous salon, furniture stands covered and the floor is bare; crossed sabres and a medieval suit of armor hang above a monumental fireplace. Cass associates the room with the costume epics of D. W. Griffith. Oval mirrors repeat one another into what seems an endless whirl, making the villa’s magnificence feel disorienting rather than reassuring. The house contains eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, numerous sitting rooms, a huge dining room, and a breakfast room with a table large enough for two dozen guests. Its abundance is inseparable from its emptiness.

The property belongs to the Bank of Southern California and has stood uninhabited for years except for occasional short-term tenants. Before the bank, it belonged to a 1930s actress whose career had been brief but whose marriage to a producer left her with the means to outlive him by decades. Local stories describe her adoption of many orphaned children, mostly Mexican, some of whom died, disappeared, or ran away. They also recount relatives and assistants who allegedly robbed or exploited her, alongside tales of drugs, alcohol, and attempted suicide. She was remembered as a generous donor to local charities, including a Catholic order devoted to fasting, prayer, and silence. Norma Jeane distrusts the gossip, aware that stories can become false even when they begin with truth. She feels indignation at the cruelty of speaking about a woman who ended her life alone in the great house. A maid found her dead in her bedroom; the coroner attributed the accidental death to malnutrition, barbiturates, and alcohol.

Mirrors, Memory, and the Nursery

The villa’s mirrors turn its interior into a psychological trap. They cover room after room, including a ground-floor bathroom from floor to ceiling. Norma Jeane feels her reflection enter each space with her, her face looming back at her until she shields her eyes. She connects this exposure to the loss of the private power of her Magic Friend: a mirror that is always present would make that inward companion impossible to keep at a distance. Cass offers to remove every mirror if they trouble her, saying that the three of them can serve as mirrors for one another. His reassurance does not erase her unease, or the gulf between their idea of the house and her response to it.

Before waking that morning, Norma Jeane dreamed that she held Baby to her swollen, painful breast and hoped to nurse him. Someone seized the child and tried to wrench him away; she escaped the horror only by forcing herself awake. At I Cipressi, the nursery gives that fear a physical setting. It is broad and long rather than comforting, with a wall of frosted glass looking outward toward what seems like eternity, pink walls, and oversized figures from old fairy tales and newer cartoons. Bugs Bunny is among the figures, whose vacant eyes and human smiles unsettle her. She tries to call the room beautiful, but its size and staring decorations make it feel less like a refuge for a baby than a place where vulnerability is exposed.

Surveillance and Uncertain Threats

The house’s history of fear is built into its security system. The real-estate agent, Theda Bara, explains the alarms, surveillance equipment, and floodlights around the perimeter, which together cost at least a million dollars. The former owner, she says, was terrified that someone would enter and kill her. Eddy G recognizes the fear as resembling his mother’s and calls it an early symptom, though he implies that it is not the last. The expensive apparatus promises protection while making the threat of intrusion central to the house’s identity.

During the viewing, Norma Jeane notices a fleeting shadow, and Cass turns in alarm. Later, something appears to move behind a brocade curtain in a bedroom. Theda Bara insists that nothing is there and starts toward it, but Cass stops her and insists that they leave and close the door. Norma Jeane and Eddy G exchange worried looks at his reaction. She also hears muffled soprano voices, children shouting and laughing, though she attributes them to the wind and her imagination. The scene sustains uncertainty rather than confirming a supernatural presence: reflections, wind, and fear offer possible explanations, while Cass’s alarm and the shifting shadow keep the rooms menacing.

The Visit’s Reversal

The viewing’s final disturbance is not only a matter of perception. As the group is leaving the nursery, a rattlesnake slips out from near a playpen. Theda Bara cries out, and Eddy G jumps onto a small white plastic table set on an island of artificial grass and miniature palms. He pulls Norma Jeane up beside him, then helps Theda Bara and the pale, trembling Cass onto the same table. All four adults end the scene crowded together, panting and frightened above the nursery floor.

That reversal condenses the villa’s central contradiction. The adults had come to inspect a grand home in which they hoped to protect a child; instead, the nursery becomes a place from which they must scramble for safety. I Cipressi remains both an extravagant possible home and a space where protection feels uncertain. Its mirrors, neglected traces, stories of its former owner, and actual snake make the search for a secure beginning end not in settled reassurance but in shared alarm.