Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Leave Her to Heaven
Directed by John M. Stahl
Written by Jo Swerling based on a novel by Ben Ames Williams
1945/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/YouTube

Mrs. Berent: There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. It’s just that she loves too much.

Gene Tierney can be one scary lady while looking lovely in some very beautiful clothes. The rest of this Technicolor noir looks great too.

When a woman comes on to you by saying you look like her father, run in the opposite direction – fast.  Author Richard Harlan (Cornel Wilde) doesn’t take this wise counsel when Ellen Berent (Tierney) uses this pickup line on him on the train to Taos, New Mexico where both will be staying with her family.  Ellen’s mission is to scatter her father’s ashes on a local bluff where both loved to ride.  We learn that father and daughter were inseparable.  Richard notices an engagement ring on Ellen’s finger early on but flirts with her any way. Then the ring is removed and next thing we know Ellen’s fiance Russell Quinton (Vincent Price) drops in to confront her.  Ellen announces that she and Richard are getting married – tomorrow. Oddly, this is the first Richard has heard of the ceremony but he is so smitten he goes along.

Richard has been waxing rhapsodic all along about his fishing cottage in rural Maine.  Ellen is keen to head there directly.  But first the two stop off in Warm Springs, Georgia where Richard’s younger brother Denny is being treated for polio.  Ellen works with the boy to get him to walk as a surprise for Richard but is appalled when everyone thinks that he is so much better he can now accompany the couple to the fishing cottage.  There is a caretaker living in the cottage as well.  Ellen starts planning how the couple can have some privacy.  With Jeanne Crain in an important sub-plot as Ellen’s adopted sister and Chill Wills as the caretaker.

This is my favorite Gene Tierney performance.  She conveys a person who is inwardly tormented and outwardly controlled perfectly.  Her slight detachment from her roles adds to the effect here.  Fortunately, we get no psychoanalytic explanations for Ellen’s behavior. She is just a femme fatale.  The production is so gorgeous it might be a Douglas Sirk melodrama.  Recommended.

Leave Her to Heaven won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color (Leon Shamroy).  It was nominated for Best Actress, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color, and Best Sound (Recording).  If there had been a Best Costumes award, I would have voted for this picture.

Clip – Cornel Wilde and Gene Tierney meet