LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)

Twentieth Century Fox, 110m 14s

"You know if you'd lived in Salem a hundred years ago they'd have burned you."

Technicolor noir? Well, sort of. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN probably is best described as a noir-stained melodrama. Though the majority of the action unfolds in flashback form, a trustworthy film noir blueprint, its opening sequence only hints at some of the surprising directions the storytelling will take. On board a train bound for New Mexico, 30-year-old author Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) is struck by the flawless beauty of wealthy socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney, who earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination), and she seems similarly enamored with him. She is stunned to note Richard's resemblance to her departed father, and also surprised to learn she has met the author of the book she has been reading. Both are destined for Rancho Jacinto, where Ellen plans to spread her father's ashes in the area mountains. While at the ranch, Ellen continues to see Richard as a tower of strength that recalls her father. She whimsically dumps her floored fiancé Russell Quinton (Vincent Price) in favor of Richard, who learns rather suddenly he is about to get hitched (she proposes to him!). It is Ellen's enthusiasm about the idea that prompts Richard to snap into life-changing action, with minimal reluctance on his part.

The second act relocates the recently married couple to Warm Springs, Georgia, where Richard's younger brother Danny Harland (Darryl Hickman) deals with paralysis from the waist down. This is Ellen's first encounter with Danny, for whom Richard maintains great affection. Danny accompanies the newlyweds to the Back of the Moon Lodge in Deer Lake, Maine, Richard's isolated lakefront location, where his old pal Leick Thome (Chill Wills) serves as the resident caretaker. Ellen senses she has forfeited her honeymoon so Richard can spend time with Leick and Danny whenever writing is not a priority. In a key sequence to what is to follow, Danny unwittingly interrupts Ellen's attempt to get frisky with her husband. Already frustrated with the living arrangements at the lodge, the setting deteriorates further for Ellen when she notices the arrival of her mother Margaret Berent (Mary Philips) and adopted half-sister Ruth Berent (Jeanne Crain) by boat. "I love you so I can't bear to share you with anybody," Ellen confesses to Richard. Little does he suspect how serious she is.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN is a production of considerable dramatic force and a veritable showcase for the talents of Tierney, who absolutely proves she is more than just a pretty face in this outing, her first in Technicolor. Various film noir motifs ripple outward for those with trained eyes; for instance, Ellen's obsession with her father and the presence of his idealized, framed image, the likening of Richard to a dead man, a lack of marital fulfillment, an emphasis on nocturnal settings and shadows, various mirrors that imply a woman's duplicitous nature, imagery that suggests entrapment, and one of the obvious examples of a dangerous noir staircase. Those noir trimmings notwithstanding, much of the case for LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN as film noir is grounded in Ellen's remarkable transformation from harmless-looking bookworm to insanely jealous, dangerously disturbed wife. There are hints of her otherness in the early going, but nothing beyond that. Ellen's neurosis is revealed only gradually.

Most likely Ellen suffers from the Electra complex, as outlined by Carl Jung. The more she speaks of her dead father and Richard's striking similarity to him, the more one questions whether the relationship she had with her father when he was alive was healthy for everyone concerned. How odd that fiancé #1 Russell assumed he and Ellen would be married only after the death of her father, which implies the bond between Ellen and her father was unnatural. Once married to Richard, Ellen is plagued by her jealousy of anyone who demands even the smallest increment of her husband's time. Her thoughts become progressively more irrational, to the point she literally will do anything to have Richard to herself. In the film's most infamous scene, the strong swimmer Ellen heartlessly allows Danny to drown, and then pretends to heroically dive to his rescue as Richard arrives on the scene. Later at Bar Harbor, after Ellen has become pregnant with Richard's child, she openly wishes the child were dead, a wish she makes a reality. Thus the selfish femme fatale of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN kills both of the male figures closest to Richard. "Ellen always wins," Richard’s attorney Glen Robie (Ray Collins) opines at the ranch, long before the extreme danger embodied by Ellen is made evident. In respect to Glen's observation, her eventual flameout threatens to destroy both Richard and Ruth. Even after her death, Ellen manages to maintain a tight grip on those she (wrongly) believed betrayed her. Like the despicable Katharine “Kitty” March (Joan Bennett) in the same year's SCARLET STREET, Ellen causes ruin from the grave.

Though Ellen's pathological behavior is not defensible, she is not entirely unsympathetic, and Richard is not without culpability. He probably lights her fuse without having any idea when he jokes with his little brother Danny that if the boy does not approve of Ellen, she can be discarded easily enough. Later at the Back of the Moon retreat Richard invites his wife's mother and sister to the lodge without consulting Ellen, who already was upset about everyone present other than her husband. Wouldn't any woman want a proper honeymoon, without being surrounded by the distractions engineered by Richard? In another instance of not including Ellen in his decisions, Richard converts Ellen's beloved father's study into a nursery, a questionable move at best. And though his mother-in-law wisely cautions Richard to dedicate all his future novels to his wife, in an especially curious move, he dedicates his latest book to Ruth, which predictably sends Ellen over the deep end. Ellen certainly is the wrong woman for Richard, but less obviously, he is the wrong man for her.

At the time of its original theatrical release, LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN shrugged off a lukewarm greeting from critics to become the highest grossing film of the decade for Twentieth Century Fox. In retrospect critics now consider it one of the great prestige dramas to emerge from the studio system. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck acquired the film rights for the 1944 source novel of the same title by Ben Ames Williams. After the bidding war that erupted, the price was $100,000, quite a large sum for what was at the time an unpublished work. The dexterous screenplay was adapted by Jo Swerling. Experienced director of photography Leon Shamroy was known for color spectacles such as DAVID AND BATHSHEBA (1951), THE ROBE (1953) and CLEOPATRA (1963), not to mention the cult classic THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (1956). The various exterior settings in Sedona, Arizona, Bass Lake, California and Warm Springs, Georgia, among others, are well handled and the processed shots are infrequent enough to seem unobtrusive to the overall presentation. But as always seems to be the case for films of all decades, scenes shot day-for-night are not very convincing, and any matte painting clearly is exactly that. No matter, Shamroy was honored with a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color. During the span of his career, Shamroy received 18 Academy Award nominations for Cinematography and claimed four statues. Director John M. Stahl was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His credits as director include MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1935), IMITATION OF LIFE (1934) and THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1944). The impeccably assembled cast of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN was well chosen, especially Vincent Price as the jilted lover, who disappears long enough to make his commanding return all the more startling. Price was built from the ground up for energetic courtroom drama.

The United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress selected LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN for preservation in 2018. Restorative work was completed by Twentieth Century Fox, the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. The Criterion Collection's newly released dual-layered Blu-ray edition features a 2K digital scan from a 35mm color reversal internegative, framed at 1.37:1 with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Judge for yourself in comparison with the 1.33:1 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD version released in 2004:

Criterion Blu-ray

Fox DVD

Criterion's supplemental material is surprisingly light for a film this revered. The only major extra is an interview with Imogen Sara Smith, the author of IN LONELY PLACES: FILM NOIR BEYOND THE CITY (2011). The interview was filmed in November of 2019 and entitled "Imogen Sara Smith on John M. Stahl's LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN" (26m 34s). Smith builds a sturdy case for Stahl as an influential but underappreciated filmmaker, in part because so many of his feature films have not been readily available for viewing, especially his efforts from the silent era. She points to SEED (1931), BACK STREET (1932) and ONLY YESTERDAY (1933) as Stahl's crucial works of the early 1930s. He was on the side of his central female figures, women who received little in return for their commitment to others. Stahl also possessed a command for the tone of his productions that allowed him to smoothly blend comedy and drama. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN was a departure from everything he had done previously, and the only movie he made that could be discussed in film noir terms. Smith delivers some excellent insights about the characters of the film, especially in relation to color schemes. Given the elaborate attention to background color and wardrobe choices, it is telling that Richard is color-blind; he cannot see his wife for what she truly is. Another good observation from Smith is her take on Ellen, who is not the usual scheming noir temptress, but rather a "monstrous version of the perfect post-war wife." The disc's only other supplement is a theatrical trailer (2m 13s). The packaging includes an essay by novelist Megan Abbott.

Despite this welcome upgrade from Criterion, fans of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN would be well advised to hang on to the old FOX DVD (or the Twilight Time Blu-ray edition released in 2013), which includes one of my all-time favorite commentary tracks. It features TIME magazine film critic Richard Schickel and Darryl Hickman, the actor who portrayed Danny Harland. Schickel covers a fair amount of historical data about the film's production, but as someone who worked on the film, Hickman's comments are solid gold and the reason to listen. A child actor named after Darryl F. Zanuck by a mother who always wanted to be an actress, Hickman worked in the film industry for many years, both in front of and behind the camera. As an acting coach in later life, he encounters many mothers who have high hopes for their children. His message for each mother is consistent:  wait until your kid is 18. Hickman learned firsthand that a child actor cannot possibly experience a normal childhood. In the course of filming LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, he learned an actor must become accountable for his own performance since a director may not be helpful with the encouragement of actors, or even understand what actors are trying to do. It proved to be the most difficult assignment of his already extensive list of film appearances. His memory of director John M. Stahl is almost entirely negative, and Hickman credits cinematographer Leon Shamroy for the rich, textured look and overall quality of the Technicolor product. But according to Hickman, Shamroy was not the easiest guy to like either, and star Gene Tierney gave nothing of herself to Hickman or co-star Cornel Wilde. Whatever was going on with Tierney, Hickman assures us she got no support from Stahl! Looking back on the film, Hickman believes Tierney felt inadequate as an actress and shut herself down emotionally to others.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN was remade as TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE (1988), a made-for-TV film that starred Loni Anderson as Ellen Berent and Patrick Duffy as Richard Harland.