Leave Her to Heaven

No one can watch this without remembering Gene Tierney's searing blue eyes, Jeanne Crain's face of innocence, or Cornel Wilde (lightyears from The Naked Prey) here looking like a photo of Pierre & Gilles come to life. It's 110 minutes of color-time-travel basking in the surreally saturated Technicolor palette of the mid 40's.

For those who have been denied the experience of watching the recently restored version with a rapt audience on a big screen as happened April 26, 2008 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre, I can only hope you'll contact a film preservation-minded theater in your area.

Though I've watched this film on DVD, nothing prepared me for the impact of the big screen. The closeups alone will take your breath away.

Is it melodrama or is it noir?--leave that to Heaven!

The melodrama of which Stahl was one of the masters throughout the thirties had muted,probably because the importance of the film noir in the following decade."Leave her to heaven' is as much a film noir as a melodrama.What's particularly puzzling is the color. Like some Lang ,HItchcock or Tourneur works ("secret beyond the door" "spellbound" or "cat people",for instance) ,this is par excellence a Freudian movie.The heroine has never solved her Oedipus complex :she has always been in love with her father -dig the scene when Gene Tierney rides her horse as she throws her father's ashes away. The love she could not make with her father ,she will make it through a third party: a husband who resembles her dad. This could be fine.She loves her husband to the exclusion of all others .But there are others ,and they are all living threats.So these intruders will be enemies.The scene when Tierney sees her family coming through binoculars can be compared to an attack of Indians or bandits when the hero is alone in a remote fort in an adventure film ,as Bertrand Tavernier pointed out in "50 ans de cinéma américain". Had the heroine preserved her intimacy -and how stupid her husband was not to have understood that!-,maybe nothing would have happened.THe color,which might seem irrelevant in a film noir ,is actually necessary because "back of the moon" ,the island in the middle of the lake is a paradise ,soon to become a lost paradise,then a living hell. A probably never better Gene Tierney outshines every other member of the cast ,which is first-rate though.Little by little,we see her become a monster ,and the actress's performance is so convincing (along with a superb script from which a lot of today's writers could draw inspiration) that it gives her horrible crimes an implacable logic.Like in a Greek tragedy. "Leave her to heaven " is by no means "romantic trash" .It's the crowning of Stahl 's career in which he transcends both melodrama and film noir.

While most film noirs conjure up images of terror in black-and-white settings, 'Leave Her To Heaven' manages to fall into the noir category despite its lush technicolor scenery and handsome interiors. It's a visually stunning example of "women's noir" performed to the hilt by a talented cast. Only Cornel Wilde fails to deliver. He seems too weak as the author who impulsively marries a beautiful woman, only to find that beneath the lovely exterior is a warped mind consumed by jealousy. He never quite measures up to Tierney's performance--seemingly sweet and kind but actually cold and cunning. Tierney has never been more beautifully photographed and looks stunning throughout. Jeanne Crain does well enough as the demure half-sister, rising to the occasion when the script demands a spunkier side to her personality. While the plot gets a little "heavy" at times, it's a supremely satisfying melodrama played against some of the most beautiful settings imaginable. Alfred Newman's music suggests the slowly developing tension. All in all, a fascinating example of film noir that succeeds despite technicolor. Another fine example of color noir might be 'Chinatown'. Well worth seeing to watch a fascinating femme fatale at work. Gene Tierney deserved her Oscar nomination--but lost to Joan Crawford of 'Mildred Pierce'.

Can a film noir be effective in glorious colour or is that a contradiction in terms? Anyway I found this lesser-known thriller to be as exciting and involving as any other black-and-white-mean-streets scenario that the 40's threw up. Tightly plotted, well acted and above all, beautifully photographed, I was gripped from first to last. My only caveats might have been the "framing" device of Cornel Wilde's lawyer's top-and-tail introduction and epilogue, which just takes away a little of the dramatic tension, an over-intrusive musical score, particularly at Wilde and Tierney's first "strangers on a train" meeting and also the fact that more wasn't made of the conclusion of the otherwise tautly drawn crucial trial scene. The acting is top-rate, with no discernible weak links. Wilde, as the duped author, shows hidden depths to his handsome exterior, Crain, in a sub De-Havilland part modulates her performance winningly as her character's importance to the plot develops and Vincent Price is absolutely excellent as Tierney's abandoned fiancé, a lawyer on the make who convincingly destroys Wilde and Crain in his vengeful piece-de-resistance as the prosecuting counsel. What a shame he was later reduced to his stereotype cackling mad-man persona of seemingly dozens of horror films. He's a revelation here, almost stealing the movie in said trial scene where he's made to recite long pieces of staccato dialogue which he delivers pitch-perfect. Gene Tierney, of course, is enthralling in the pivotal role of the possessed / possessive Ellen, who uses her obvious beauty and sophistication to ensnare Wilde, before taking off into psychopath territory, which sees her effectively kill Wilde's disabled but adored younger brother and devise an almost perfect beyond-the-grave trap for Wilde and Crain to fall into. Great as all these pluses are, I keep coming back to the cinematography which captures like no other film I've ever seen tones of radiant beauty in almost every shot, both interior and exterior. In fact all I can say to finish is that I could find very little to fault this glorious but unheralded example of the golden age of Hollywood.

She's wonderfully scary in this role, which I view as a sort of precursor to other "crazy chick" flicks like Play Misty for Me and Fatal Attraction. The primary difference is the crazy woman marries the man she's obsessed with--some could argue for no good reason, as Richard is a rather boring chap who happens to remind Ellen of her father. But she has mommy and sister issues in addition to her daddy issues. So the audience knows she's manipulative and obsessive, but it's interesting to see how long it takes for hubby to realize that he actually married a monster. Although the film suggests Ellen is simply evil, she clearly is a sociopath. This film is worth watching primarily because you have these ho-hum dull folks in Ellen's life who all end up being her victim in one way or another, primarily because none of them wanted to accept that this woman was capable of such heinous acts. Tierney deserved an Oscar nomination for the scene on the water alone. She's brilliant in this role.