Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

John M. Stahl

Writers:

Jo Swerling (screenplay)
Ben Ames Williams (novel)

Release Date:

20 December 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

Tagline:

Hers was the deadliest of the seven sins.

Plot:

Richard Harland, a young writer, meets a beautiful woman, Ellen, on a train. They fall in love and are married...

Plot Keywords:

Writer | Jealousy | Train | Beautiful Woman | Love

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 3 nominations

Cast

Gene Tierney	...	Ellen Berent Harland
Cornel Wilde	...	Richard Harland
Jeanne Crain	...	Ruth Berent
Vincent Price	...	Russell Quinton
Mary Philips	...	Mrs. Berent
Ray Collins	...	Glen Robie
Gene Lockhart	...	Dr. Saunders
Reed Hadley	...	Dr. Mason
Darryl Hickman	...	Danny Harland
Chill Wills	...	Leick Thome
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Guy Beach	...	Sheriff (unconfirmed)

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Singapore:PG | South Korea:12 | UK:U | Canada:PG (video rating) | Argentina:16 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (PCA #11042)

Filming Locations:

Bass Lake, California, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

The famous (and dramatic) swimming scene that takes place in the lake for Darryl Hickman's character was in water so cold that the young actor caught pneumonia.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Ellen's method of scattering her father's ashes (flinging the urn from side to side during a horseback ride through the desert) would leave both her and the horse covered in her father's remains.

Quotes:

Russell Quinton: I loved you. And I'm still in love with you.
Ellen Berent Harland: That's a tribute.
Russell Quinton: And I always will be. Remember that.
Ellen Berent Harland: Russ, is that a threat?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Cosby Show: Elvin Pays for Dinner (#6.13)" (1990)

Soundtrack:

Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 2

Incest through a third party.

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.